School Committee: April 1, 2021

Transcript captured from YouTube auto-captioning. No speaker labels; proper names and dollar figures occasionally misheard. Click any timecode to jump to that moment in the source video.

1:01 emily i sent the link to you so just let me know when you’ve got it going on the website and we will kick things off

1:54 all right um just for the ease of kind of keeping up with the live stream and everything um if people other than the committee aren’t speaking if they could keep their screen off that would be great um i will officially call us to order at 602 pm and i will officially call to order and enter us into the budget public hearing of fiscal year 22 at 6 02 pm this evening we will hear dr bucky’s presentation he has a number of slides that he will go through walking all of us through the process of the budget and then after that we will open the floor to constructive public feedback knowing that this is a hearing not a

2:40 forum and we will not be debating the budget this evening school committee will keep track and try to address some of the concerns and questions that we’re able to con and the superintendent will uh so that we’ll able to address them afterwards and others um you know we we may just take away and think about it before we vote the budget um and then if school committee has additional thoughts we will kind of weigh in after after the public weighs in dr bucky take it away great thank you very much can everybody see my screen awesome um this has been a long time in coming and i’m actually very excited uh to do the

3:26 public budget hearing tonight uh because this has been a very collaborative uh process it has uh included uh the leadership team and you know i’ve used the word iterative a lot but this is shared leadership and although i am making the presentation tonight it represents hours of collaboration communication transparency trust in getting to priorities and re-prioritizing them and so things are continuously evolving we go through multiple reviews you’ll see this evening that what we discussed on tuesday is not where we are today we said in two public meetings on tuesday that there was a gap and i’m

4:12 proud to report tonight there is no longer a gap so that’s that multiple reviews that’s that continuously evolving process we adjust for new information i received a retirement letter today dr oxford receives information for students tuitioning in or tuitioning out or moving in or moving out of the district so again leadership team budget subcommittee joint budget income school committee budget committee very transparent i think that uh jackie belfecker said it very clearly at our meeting tuesday the public has had more access to this i need to pull up my mask i’ll have the

4:57 people watching um via zoom in access to information than any time in the past and i think that’s a good thing because the more feedback that we get on the budget the better and stronger it will be and our schools will be and so original proposed to final approval is what you’ll see tonight budget calendar budget calendar really this work began in earnest in november michelle and i met with building principals and engaged conversation initially about enrollment because that’s one of our biggest drivers so talking to them about what did you anticipate your enrollment was going to be this this year

5:44 what are your numbers actually this year and what are you planning for for next year we then ask about staffing to align with that enrollment do they know of any retirements that are pending anyone that has indicated that they will be resigning something that we don’t talk about a lot in public will there be teachers moving on for other reasons those all impact the budget and so michelle and i had that opportunity to ask each principal each director what do you need for your school for your program for it to operate at a high level and so the bil the budget was built around those requests and those conversations

6:30 conversations conversations so i can turn my camera on

6:54 how about now everything back in order so you have january january have several meetings february several meetings march it really picked up in the opportunity for us to meet and review and revise and then you get to tonight which is the public budget hearing there’s a question for next week if we want to schedule an additional meeting or special meeting in order to vote the budget before then the scheduled meeting with finance committee which is on april 12th so we set some budget priorities and i just want to walk the committee through those priorities giving dollar amounts to them

7:40 so to meet our contractual obligations is kind of a no-brainer that is a major priority in our budget i’m proud of what we negotiated with mea which is a one percent raise on day 92 and that represents their cost of living increases the steps and lanes so that budget priority is 862 549. looking back the fy 21 meet contractual obligations was 1.4 million you see the small graphic in the corner that’s the superintendent thinking looks like i have nearly six hundred thousand dollars for priorities since the roll forward now it’s not that

8:27 simple i get it but keep that number in the back of your head because it’s going to play out in a couple slides

8:36 other goals we had technology to address the infrastructure hardware upgrades and integration the capital leases uh will be 212 706 and it’s very important to note that that’s year one of three so that 212 will be a recurring expense we wanted to explore reinstating a technology integration specialist in one iteration we were looking for two in this budget we are proposing one another goal and priority was curriculum that we wanted to adopt a new pre-k to mathematics program the budget figure for that is one hundred thousand dollars again year one of three we wanted to explore adding curriculum coaches or specialists in an original

9:23 budget proposal that was two what you will hear tonight for me is that is rolling forward as one other fy 22 goals and priorities central uh central administration for the human resources we’re budgeting 80 000 for that we do have an offset of 50 000 for the current hr assistant position but uh collaboration discussions with town for hr and potentially technology are ongoing but those are the figures being rolled forward in tonight’s proposed fy 22 budget facilities maintenance was a priority that i shared with you the facilities audit is still be uh is to be determined uh it is finished in my

10:10 meeting with todd this week they have submitted i think a draft to him just to make sure that uh they have things accurate but in this budget you will see we’re budgeting 37 thousand dollars for maintenance needs supplies materials repairs replacements safety contracts that we have and then a more accurate projection for utilities costs and that’s 77 000 which you will see aligned with the opening of the brown school new school new school that was one of our budget priorities utilities transportation and again we’ve delineated those costs that you’ll see in the budget for those priorities

10:55 priorities priorities also part of the budget that i just don’t want to lose sight of that the town supports us in funding were the capital requests for this year and i know that the facilities subcommittee shared these and you are aware of them but it’s important i think for viewers at home to know that we have 224 thousand dollars worth of approved capital things in the budget where else does the school district get money there are grants uh we have the metco grant i’m not going to read slides to you but just to give you a flavor that it isn’t just the operating budget that we’re talking about it is the operating budget that we’re talking about tonight but there are many layers

11:42 and pieces to how things are funded in the system we have several revolving funds you know that we collect user fees the high school has a tuition revolving account for students who attend marblehead high school as exchange students the guidance department has a revolving account and the special education for tuition has a revolving account a major driver of the budget is enrollment and so this is a slide that i shared with the budget subcommittee and one that nesdek provides for us numbers are always a moving target when it comes to enrollment so

12:29 they predicted pre-pandemic mind you for us that our enrollment this year would be 26.65 we’re at 26.91 give or take i think there’s a slide coming up that has a slightly different number uh but this particular presentation has been about a month in the making so enrollment numbers change what is interesting is the move forward to a forward look the next 10 years and so they’re looking at an almost 600 student drop by 2030 now a lot of things impact enrollment you know you could have a new company move to town or they could the there could be a new business or

13:16 something uh that drives uh the economy here and people wanting to move to marblehead and so our enrollment might change but based on the work that nesdek does for enrollment projections they’re looking at us on a downward trend uh to a projected low of 2008 students in twenty thirty budget because it’s so important i give you another look this gives us the current enrollment and then what we have budgeted for for next year i do think it’s of note that we have 258 currently enrolled seniors and we’re planning for 168 incoming kindergartners and again

14:04 kindergarten is a best guesstimate but that shows you that trend in enrollment that that prior slide bore out and then if you do the diagonal you can see where we are anticipating increases i think we had a number of fourth graders go out this year so you see that 199 to 226 that’s a big jump but we anticipate a number of those uh returning

14:34 last slide on enrollment i promise this just gives you a more in the weeds uh disaggregated look um at where the sections will be at the glover school in brown particularly k to three and then village for four i didn’t include five and six because they do teaming and it tends to get confusing if somebody sees well they have 200 students in fifth grade but only five sections it’s because of teams i did highlight two sections in the brown school where we’re looking at reducing a teacher as a result of enrollment in those two grades another major driver of the budget is

15:21 special education and our outed district placement costs i have included what was budgeted this year what the request is next year and then the change and that will also show up on the running budget document maintenance another maintenance another uh more predictable in marblehead than most communities but maintenance costs uh can be uh unpredictable i had a facilities manager in a former district that knew if you change the temperature in the pool by five degrees what that would result

16:07 in monthly utility savings um we’re not there but we are trying to get a better trend analysis of what we spend in utilities because this is a driver of our budget and being able to look back over five year particularly with the brown school coming online and hopefully having better uh conservation and more green use of energy we can get a better sense of our utilities costs across the district maybe my favorite slide

16:44 because it gives you a sense of where we have been and i’m just flipping my notes because i took a little speaker’s notes to make sure so the green box is the fy 20 final budget what was approved before the world went sideways last february this is what the leadership team proposed to you as the budget with a delta of 1.8 million dollars remember way back in the beginning i put on that slide that the roll forward salaries was 1.4 million looking at that that’s a pretty conservative ask beyond contractual obligations considering that you would have

17:32 utilities and transportation and other costs pandemic hits the final budget that was agreed to was 40 million which is a difference of almost a million dollars again keeping in mind your salary roll forward was 1.4 so the difference between the fy 20 final to the fy 21 final is 8.96 this year our budget’s 40 000 we proposed in february 42 6. the difference from the fy 21 final

18:18 to what we proposed is a big jump 2.1 million of identified need fy22 current proposed budget that you’ll see tonight is 41.8 that’s a difference of 800 000 between uh what we proposed initially to what we’re proposing tonight and so that difference is 1.3 million dollars another way to look at that in a more narrow scope is salaries and expenses fy 21 to fy22 you see that 1.3 million dollar difference again your year over year

19:06 this slide takes you through how did we get to that 41 and the operating uh you see the contractual increases of 862. um michelle has talked regularly about that student opportunity act um special education tuition funding we decreased that today to meet some other priorities which i’ll talk about in a minute i.t general expenses the facilities that you saw on that slide curriculum central admin student services you can see all of those and then the increase of the 77 000 for the brown school some operating cost decreases

19:53 the one-time funding of capital items the closure of the evil of coffin village um village general operating costs you see the staffing decreases i will point out that the brown um reducing two classroom teachers that has been won it is now two other staffing reductions and savings due to known retirements is 91 804 but as i said today i just got a notification of a retirement today so that is always moving we have presented to you our tiered priorities we are able to fund all of the green tiered priorities

20:38 tiered priorities tiered priorities we’re able to do that by increasing that preschool revenue from a 40 000 figure that you saw the other night to what is now a 53 thousand dollar figure the capital leases which will be covered with stimulus funding uh the integration specialist in technology and curriculum the new math program which will be funded through esser funds and then the guidance counselor in the unified arts at village those additions take us to 41 72

21:21 we’re able to fund the human resources director the veterans reading teacher not funding the custodian but i’m pleased to report tonight that we will be able to change the bright tutor to a bright teacher and that brings us to that 41 839 budget figure for this evening none of the priorities in pink or tier 3 priorities are funded at this time

21:52 this is just the tracking sheet to show you when we started in february what happened in march and most recently uh what happened as of today on 4-1 um

22:11 that gives you uh the target and the request of a budget of forty one thousand eight thirty nine five forty three i did just i had a great meeting uh with town administrator uh jason silva today um i think that they said at our last budget subcommittee meeting that jason and i needed to lock ourselves in a room until we came to zero i’m very happy to report that we came to zero today and i do want to thank him and the town and fincom for their support and getting us to zero and for being collaborative in this process and jason just shared this with me and i think it is helpful that

22:56 that that in budgeting sometimes it’s either or it’s a binary choice we’re going to fund it or we’re not but there are a lot of layers to what goes into funding and the idea that marblehead isn’t supportive i i would say is incorrect and i thought that jason sharing these slides with me in comparing 26 different communities and communities uh to whom we compare ourselves so the waylands the westin’s the lexingtons our neighbors newburyport uh manchester essex so in terms of the per pupil expenditure

23:44 we have had the biggest increase 2015 to 2019 now we all know what 20 and 21 have been like but i think it is helpful to see that it is a bigger picture when it comes to school funding and finance and we have benefited from our per-pupil expenditure increasing and that concludes me talking for 24 minutes i’m happy to take questions from the committee great i think if you want to just stop sharing your screen

24:27 i will say because the budget is a shared leadership endeavor that i have asked each member of the leadership team to be available tonight in case there is a program or building specific question that they would be able uh to answer it great thank you john um i will open up the the questions and comments now after we’ve seen dr bucky’s presentation if any members of the community would like to weigh in and give us their thoughts i will ask that they raise their hands and i will call on them um and then i ask that you state your full name and address for the record as well i apologize i’m so used to it being the

25:13 committee with questions for the public budget hearing the community we will we will circle back to the committee as well uh kathy kendall i have your name up first hello it’s kazzy kendall um 163 jersey street um

25:32 first to admit that high finance is not my strong point um and that i really need to pay attention to numbers because of my dyslexia to really get a understanding of what i’m being told and what i’m what i’m seeing for myself it’s difficult for me to reconcile that this is a needs-based budget and that no cuts to either staff or services have been made while also hearing that we are heavily relying on one-time funding for things like curriculum and other necessaries it’s also as much as you say no cuts have been made i also saw that we are losing a secretary for nurse allied arts teachers classroom

26:21 teachers um a principal so to me the fact that we have members of our school community who have jobs today but who will not have jobs next school year that seems like a cut to me i’m also a little bit worried about how heavily we rely on pto funding which is willingly given but we rely on that funding for real things that aren’t necessary not enrichments or nice to haves but real things that our schools need to perform um you know we hear poor mandy murphy year after year

27:06 once that extra guidance counselor and going into school year 22 knowing what these kids and the staff have been through open in a preschool that has the potential to have medically fragile children in it i’d really like just to hear a little bit more about why we’re not funding the guidance counselor and why we’re cutting a nurse thank you i i guess i could uh completely address that directly the the guidance counselor is funded and there will be a nurse at the brown school thank you but it’s it’s said on the thing that you’re eliminating a nurse that’s because we are consolidating

27:54 three schools into one but the the end result is the nurse who’s currently employed will not have a job next year is that correct that is correct that’s known that’s been a known piece for since the brown school was yeah but that feels like a cut i don’t know how else i would describe that it’s a it’s a it’s it’s a natural thing that happens when schools are consolidated and it’s unfortunate 100 but it’s

28:33 yeah the other option is to keep staff that are redundancy

28:40 and i think i think it’s also just worth uh commenting that there’s also when when you see in those reductions um [Music] cassie that so the reduction of a principal the school is only going to have one principle glover only has one principle so in this situation um we actually have a principal who will be retiring at the end of the year so um it is not necessarily a cut but if that had been the situation yes there would have been a reduction in staff because we do not need to have two principles

29:25 two principles two principles at the school versus um glover that has one principle so some of these things as sarah mentioned is just sort of a natural progression of the consolidation of the schools coming together okay and and the heavy reliance on the pto funding and and the one-time funding i didn’t even know we could use ester grant for things like curriculum but then again i’m not i’m not as i said um i’m not honed in to the finer points

29:59 i mean i’ll jump in there sarah or megan if you want to jump in but i think cazzy so i think as we go through this what you’ll see over the next couple of years with both the town side of government and the school side particularly with one-time funding that’s exactly what we’ll be looking to do is

30:21 use one-time funding for events that can be paid for so rather than funding salaries with grants that will eventually run out in this case if it’s technology or one-time funding for uh math curriculum then that money can be used for that one-time event and it doesn’t carry forward in future budgets so that’s that’s the best way to use grant money is so that you don’t get tied up with having expenses in future years when the grant money is no longer available okay i’m hoping other people have have um questions too as i say this is not my

31:07 strong point um i do struggle to keep up because of the dyslexia and it’s much it’s easier for me to understand when i’m when i’m reading hearing the words than actually seeing the numbers thank you kazzy uh colleen nile if i can just make one clarification um we’re go we have our students spread over three schools but which currently from that merge of the coffin and bowel community employ two nurses um because we didn’t hire another nurse to cover um at village so we’re covering with the the two nurses so we’ll we’ll go from two to one not three to one um and so we’ll have one nurse for 450 students correct similar to what glover has

31:55 colleen colleen hi um like cassie can you please state your full name and uh address for the record sure uh colleen renee nile three bowdoin street um like cowsie i am not a budget person um i’m actually a writer and in writing often what’s not included or what’s omitted um is as important as what is included and not omitted um so i do have some questions um you can decide if you’re able to answer them that’s great if not i would just ask that you consider them before you complete this section some of my questions where do these 12 budget priorities fit into our long range or strategic plan

32:41 for example the position which is listed as a tier three so it’s not funded without that position where do we see our new or existing landscaping fields courts in one year five years ten years where in this budget document again thank you for posting this this is all new right before the meeting so where in this budget document do you see our current or future values as a district reflected how does this specific iteration of the budget put us where we want to be in 1 5 or 10 years specifically how does funding planned curriculum upgrades to mathematics with esser relief funds fit our district

33:29 values or set us up for future growth and excellence finally how does budget planning from a pretty good place to just keep the lights on advance our program how as a district do we strive for excellence or greatness when i’m hearing over and over that our budget goal is set level funding status quo we have to keep the town happy i’m very glad to see that you’re at a zero um that is great news but i have to ask what does that zero mean moving forward one five or ten years what does that zero today look like in one five or ten years thank you

34:17 thank you colleen catherine martin oh sorry about that i didn’t know i was next catherine martin 29 west shore drive uh first off kind of curious about how come this wasn’t posted 48 hours in advance per massachusetts laws for um school committee budget hearings um i did send that to sarah and john today honestly i don’t want to be the one who’s always picking at this thread but at some point you guys have got to get your procedural house in order we all want to weigh in you know what you don’t have to weigh in sarah my questions are about the budget tonight

34:59 yeah 50 more 4 million school we just built the brown school i’ve sat on the building committee for five years now uh we built a vice principal’s office will we be funding a vice principal position no we will not okay we also built a large special education wing that or area probably i guess it was four or five classrooms at roughly a thousand square foot of classroom at roughly four to five hundred dollars a square foot so that we could provide redundant special education to glover how many special education teachers are we adding to the brown school next year i believe this has been asked and answered several times but i will so how many years ago i don’t want a big explanation i want to

35:45 know how many special education teachers we’re adding to the browser next year david david respect david the superintendent you are not to be talking over the superintendent please please okay my apologies please i’ll ask dr oxford to weigh in on the redundant services good evening um sure sorry eric thank you no problem um so to be as succinct as i can because i know i cannot um i know thank you um technically uh just just the two right the two pre-k fall under the special education umbrella uh we have had a ton of work and collaboration um internally within our department to ensure that

36:31 equity and parity across both k to three buildings so i’ll leave it at that i guess for now high level but um thank you eric you’re welcome and so are we able to fund the stem program for the multi-purpose room yes yes excellent thank you and that was added to this budget

37:02 i i do it’s ask and answered yes okay and then my last question would be for the math curriculum i just heard david say that we’re going to be trying to use grant money for one-time needs but my understanding was that that is funded over three years so what is how are we anticipating funding it over the next three years and same question for the 212 000 technology ask

37:35 i think we’ve made it clear that um you know this that over the course of the coming year that we’re developing a strategic plan and will almost definitely be going in for an override and so that will feed into all of those types of things so we’ll be going for an override next year i’m katie we will most likely be going for an override that’s as much as you’re going to paint me into a corner

38:09 sorry hi there everyone thanks so much paul baker 79 overlook road marblehead um i’m just gonna go straight for it um i just like to thank dr bucky and his entire leadership team for coming to this um place that you’ve got us to i really appreciate all the work you’ve put in um again to all of you guys on the school committee you’ve done a fabulous job you’re all volunteers thank you so much also to um ben berman and everybody in the finance committee you’ve all done fantastically again to get us where we are the years of dysfunction behind us i think and for people to come on here and berate you um continuously for trying to do your best as volunteers

38:56 is is beyond me i just do not get it um you guys putting in order something that’s been out of whack forever just as jason silver is for the town we have to bite this suck it up go another year without an override and things will get better but this constant bickering and and jabbing about this process is it’s just ridiculous you’ve got to zero these people should be happy for it and grateful for it and i am and thank you so much that’s it thank you paul i appreciate that uh ann

39:34 and some ghosts to garfield street basically i mean i don’t really know much about budget i’m 16 i’m a student at marblehead high school my one concern is about the arts program i’m an artist i have i did art studio one last year i’m doing painting and drawing too this year and i noticed in the budget that you guys are getting rid of an alliance teacher and that last year you guys also got rid of the teacher for art studio three and four and one of the things that i was most excited about as a high school student was how good the arts program was before you guys um changed it around

40:19 by firing an art teacher last year for i think it was because of the pandemic at least that was the rumor i heard i don’t know feel free to correct me i would be really happy if it wasn’t if it was for some other reason but i feel like for a lot of for in like positions of crisis the arts program gets cut a lot and i know that enrollment has gone down but i was just hoping that even though you guys got to zero and that’s great maybe next you guys could try to put a little more emphasis on the arts i would really appreciate it and i know so many talented artists and it just feels kind of painful to have the cad teacher teaching us painting yeah i would

41:05 i would i would it would be great and i know my art teacher feels a little bit like she’s falling apart at this like just the whole program feels like it’s falling apart at the seams so i think that they appreciate a little bit a few more teachers just a little bit more support from you all in the future but congratulations on getting to zero that’s all thank you anne uh dr bucky or mr power do you want to weigh in on that at all sure i’m sure i’ll see mr bauer’s camera come on but i know that they needed to make some decisions regarding enrollment in art courses for the fy 21 budget for the fy 22 budget the allied arts reduction is because of the merger of

41:51 schools into the brown school so you don’t have a bigger advocate for the arts than your current superintendent and so i would not support a budget that is eliminating arts but if we have enrollment in courses that don’t support it and i think that mr bauer can probably pick it up from there yes absolutely that’s the case uh last year um a decrease in enrollment for our courses and trying to do the best that we could we had um without getting the details of the personnel um moving on um to new positions so nobody was fired um with that and certainly working with our lead teacher in the arts who probably is your teacher miss holler white and working on trying to work to stabilize as we have been and

42:37 being creative as we can to utilize the resources we have and looking to continue to actually build moving forward and we’re going to have some reviews in terms of our requirements and things like that that’s more to be said later but definitely an advocate here as well for the performing arts because very proud of the work that has been done um through that thank you mr thank you both and um i can say as not an athlete in high school but as a music person that the arts are very very important to me as well anne so i i’m in your corner on that thank you for speaking as well anne and raising those concerns uh alastair connor ellis star connor nine claptman’s lane marblehead

43:23 marblehead marblehead i just wanted to ask about i didn’t really hear in these meetings the the plan for addressing any of the um kids that have fallen behind during this time this last uh year and a half and how we’re ensuring that we don’t get a spike in ieps going forward for those kids that fell behind and what the funding and plan was for recovery for that

43:58 dr bucky yeah i nan murphy and i had this conversation earlier today so i see her smiling she did report out at school committee that we are using the student opportunity act money which is actually in this buzz budget to do some uh testing and assessments for students who may have learning needs and that’s for regular education students are special education students receive extended year services or supplemental services during the summer so i’ll just dish over to nan to kind of give a refresher on what that will look like great thank you dr bucky yep we have um dr oxford and i have been talking and planning for some of that summer work to

44:43 happen for students and we have built that into the grant and i know um since our original conversation and presentation dr oxford is also partnering with the ymca and so we’re we’re looking at being able to bring some really great things together for our kiddos we are also it’s a great question and it’s on every educator’s mind what we’re going to do and how we are going to assess and remediate the loss that that work that every student across our our commonwealth and nation has experienced this year it’s it’s just um you know there’s statistics and articles being written of how this is going to be something that school leaders struggle with for

45:29 with for with for five to ten years so we’re we are having those internal conversations i’ve met with a number of staff member from student support services we’re looking at how next year we are going to identify students and provide tiered interventions how we’re going to provide professional development to staff our math program every math program we’ve looked at that’s the driving um factor what what do you have what do your interventions look like what are your assessment components look like what kind of resources do our will our teachers have at their fingertips what kinds of things do we have for

46:16 parents in the home to use with students so there those conversations have been happening with the office of student services since september so um we will continue to have those conversations and you know maybe later in the spring we can i’ll present some of our proposed ideas for how we’re going to do exactly that thank you nan jenny armini hi there hi there thanks everyone uh for giving me this opportunity i’m jenny armini russell street and i’m wondering do we have state approval to use recovery funding for the math curriculum

47:02 math curriculum math curriculum we don’t want to face an unfunded expense and we don’t want to run a foul so is there a sense from the state that this is an appropriate use of funding absolutely we reached out to the school superintendents association to the school committee association i conferred with the north shore superintendents roundtable the federal government has given a very wide latitude for how these funds are used and certainly wouldn’t propose something to the school committee that had not been vetted thanks so much

48:04 all right um not unmuting herself but um i will oh here you go hi alexa

48:13 don’t forget to unmute yourself [Music]

48:22 hi sorry about that alexis 22 forever sorry my internet decided to crush um right as i was coming on so uh first of all thank you for you know all of you doing the work that you’re doing let’s start with that and second of all i just wanted to bring up some points in regards to i heard mentioned which i think is great and for a long-term strategic plan and you know i just as someone who has been volunteering in the marketplace public school system you know since my daughter stepped as a kindergartner and you know my oldest is now going into 10th grade and i have watched the public school systems in the funding for a long time and i just wanted to ask that for as you finish this budget and you’re looking at that long-term plan as you’re looking at that strategic plan i know this information has been provided to previous superintendents you

49:09 know years ago and it you know really never got any attraction and i’m hoping to see that it does get some fraction as we move forward but you know and i think there’s a lot of people that have been involved in the pcos and other volunteer organizations in town that would be happy to provide that data to the school committee and to you know dr bucky to really have a you know accurate picture of where the funding is going and i think that it’s important to note that there are ptos and pcos and other volunteer organizations that are really funding critical infrastructure you know things such as you know smart boards and wi-fi and security doors and you know fans window blinds furniture uh not really funding the enrichment

49:54 opportunities that they would really like to be directing their money towards but really towards that basic level of infrastructure you know chromebooks for teachers those types of things that i would like to see in the future being built into the budget for the schools and also out of respect for the administration and the teachers that are working so hard that they are not having to come to volunteer organizations looking for you know basic critical supply that that ends up you know getting looped into the budget and that that not only you know happens specifically for the school that i volunteered at but other you know schools as well so as you move forward looking at things i hope that you take some of that into consideration and you know find a way to work that into a bigger strategic plan of where the schools are going and also looking at other

50:41 outside the box opportunities that don’t cost the district money but really open up opportunities for special education programs at the high school of enhancing the dual enrollment and building things into the budget where perhaps that money needs to be supplied up front but then the district could get reimbursement from the state so at the end of the day there is no money out of pocket for the district and that we’re not leaving money on the table and we’re opening up opportunities for our students in these new ways so as you move forward and you know work through this year but more importantly uh dr bucky as you you know work through the town of marblehead and join that there is a lot of that historical information that has been happening for years and as i stare down 10 years of volunteering for this town i would like

51:26 to see that we take that and move forward so thanks again and i hope you guys uh take that into your next year’s plan i dress can i address that one sure thank you um alexa thank you i appreciate your your comments and i think you’re absolutely right as a district we are incredibly lucky to have such supportive families especially through the pco and i agree probably historically there’s been um a reliance on those pto funds for operating budget and that’s not the way it should work right our operating budget should support our operations and the pco money should 100 percent be for enrichments and and um programs specifically to the students and that’s the approach you know with michelle coming on board that we’ve been taking um

52:11 um um the superintendent does meet on a regular basis with the pco central council and they have provided that um historical funding so it does come into our overall financial plan um so we are well aware of it we are tracking it we are working with the pcos and i completely agree there should not be a reliance on our operations and i i don’t think for this budget that’s the case you know dr bucky i’ll let you speak to that but no i just i i no it is not part of this budget but i think that i’d love to have alexa come in and meet with me um i appreciate her thoughtful comments and contributions to this and as we’re

52:58 looking at launching strategic plan not to steal my thunder for later in the evening but i’m gonna be talking about that but having this historical perspective um from a variety of lenses is important and so i’m extending an invitation here via zoom for you to come in uh to widget road and sit down and maybe share your perspective on this because i really appreciate your comments tonight thank you i appreciate that and i also think really for you know watching and being through so many school committees and so many different superintendents over the years and the time volunteering it’s really working with the administration and the staff and those are the people who have their feet on the ground and those are the people that really uh we met the needs but it really shouldn’t have been coming

53:43 from our organization and they should not have been having to wait and see if those basic needs were going to be met so you know i hope that we change change that tactic and really start moving forward so they’re not placed in that uncomfortable position agree thank you

54:06 so one of my concerns um with the pto funding is we are actually in my opinion relying on them you know the esser money um it’s coveted relief we all know that whatever the acronym is it’s it’s coveted relief money and things like tents um smart boards all of that is crystal clear no gray you know totally within the guidelines of um coveted money relief money because these are situations that wouldn’t exist without covet they are 100 driven by covet our math curriculum we identified before covet even hit that we needed a math curriculum this year we know it’s going to cost us three years we’re using cobit money

54:52 to pay for a math curriculum that wasn’t needed because of covid when if we were using our coven money to pay for tents and stuff we wouldn’t be asking our ptos to cover this so although it’s kind of a juggle i do think we do have that continued reliance on the ptos which is concerning when the money is is there we just need to hold it to pay for a math curriculum which again yes curriculum is okay under this but it’s curriculum my understanding is the spirit of it is it’s curriculum needs created by learning gaps created by covid and in this math curriculum there is no ambiguity there’s no gray it is not driven by covet so i you know it is a concern

55:46 sorry can i just clarify that though because we are using our code money for smart boards for rolling desks for ppe we are 100 using our grant money for the coveted needs that we have to get our school to get our children into school more often so that is what we are using our coated money for as well i just want to be clear on that thanks megan and i’d like to clarify you know we have another it hasn’t been finalized but our understanding is is going to be close to

56:24 six million dollars that’s coming to the town of marblehead to be used over the next three years and we will get the proper guidance on um why we’re getting that money and how that money can be spent but i’m hopeful that three years from now kovid will not be in existence but there’s a reason why the government is giving us six million dollars and i think we’ll be able to use those monies for um issues related to technology or facilities or one-time expenses that will help um you know move the country forward i think that was what

57:09 uh president biden’s initiative was was to try and get it get us to move forward and so i think um it’s money that’s well spent and it will be used wisely by both the school district and the town

57:28 we we are currently at the high school in my understanding fundraising for smart boards like anime my understanding from parents coming to me today was emails went out today asking that we fundraise for by parents for smart rolling smart boards so my point is just check every box like if we’ve covered every covert expense and before we fall into parents and then there’s money left and this falls into it well then fine but but don’t fill the other boxes before we and ask the parents to pay for what falls underneath this um and as far and these are reoccurring expenses they’re for three years um and i i would like you know just because where we’ve been and and i and i know

58:16 the integrity of dr bucky and michelle um and i would hate for them to be in a situation where you know we find out later on that actually the dor wouldn’t have signed off on this is it as easy as just making a phone call and saying from the state not from other superintendents or one of the like from a governing body is this okay go ahead dr bucky no i i mean i would not risk my reputation or the district without feeling that this could move forward in checking with michelle in checking with the school superintendents association these are federal dollars so i know that there is literacy loss

59:03 as a result of covid so other districts are buying school libraries or literacy curriculum or classroom level libraries people are worried about social emotional so they’re buying health curricula to address that there’s clearly going to be numeracy challenges for younger learners and so a robust math curriculum to replace because we were talking about a math curriculum prior i don’t think negates us being able to use current stimulus dollars because the children will have math needs they will have literacy needs they will have social emotional needs i know of one that’s building an outdoor rock garden as a place for children for regulation

59:51 needs coming back into more crowded buildings or being in school when they haven’t been in school of creating an outdoor space and so superintendents are understandably very cautious that you don’t want to use uh these dollars for anything that wouldn’t be supported the challenge i guess if there is a challenge is that the federal government hasn’t listed a you can spend for abc but you cannot spend for xyz and so absent those clear guidelines and i think you’ve heard me say regularly this year that the guidance then receives guidance that has revised guidance

1:00:37 right now they’re saying that we can use these dollars and the people i’m consulting with say that that is a clear acceptable use of those dollars for what i’m putting forward this evening thanks john thanks john uh sandra callahan hey guys i’m going to apologize in advance if i hope my internet uh cuts up because i’m at work um let me just give us your address i’m sorry 25 august app sandra callahan thanks um a couple of things um one is just in regards to the budget this year a couple concerns i have one nursing hours i’m significantly concerned about that for several reasons um i think one nurse at the brown and glover school for 400 plus students is

1:01:23 not sufficient um maybe i can’t even justify that even before covid but you guys need to take in consideration going forward we will be having children in school full-time three feet apart the amount of responsibilities for these nurses now in regards to finding out contact tracing and quarantine they haven’t even even you know tipped the skills in regards how much involvement that’s going to be um that’s a huge concern that i have by reducing the nursing hours number two is we have pool testing right now i don’t know if that’s something that we’re going to pursue going forward but the more students we have in our school the more pool testing we’re going to have to do which will also involve more nursing um nursing time and lastly these kids have had significant issues mental health work across the board when you see kids that

1:02:09 are going back into the school we’re going to see increased anxiety depression they’re going to present with very psychosomatic complaints is what the nurse will report as you’re going to see more headaches you’re going to see more abdominal pain the nurse is going to be extremely busy so that’s my concern with nursing hours that we’re significantly reducing them uh number two guidance services we didn’t have enough guidance support before covid we surely don’t have enough now i can speak on that i’m a pediatric nurse i see patients in the office every single day these kids are in a bad place right now we need to be prepared going forward um and then lastly um obviously i have significant concerns about loss of learning you know how we’re going to be able to capture these kids that have uh lost um

1:02:54 lost um lost um you know lost skills this year but also uh have the time to increase services for kids that are already have ieps um and then lastly and i don’t know if this is going to be for the budget this year or going forward we and marblehead know that our enrollment is down parents were not happy in marblehead this year a lot of kids left the district i don’t know if they’re coming back and have you guys prepared for that going forward of what our budgets are going to look like so like i said i don’t know if next year if i know budgets or we have to have numbers i think in october like i said i’m not a budget person um the one thing that i do have to give you guys a huge kudos for um being a practitioner i don’t have the

1:03:39 luxury of being able to go to a lot of these meetings i hope you guys continue doing these meetings on zoom because it’s allowed me to be more involved in regards to what’s happening in the school and in the town that going forward that happens but i do know that i think there’s some federal money or state money based on what our numbers are in october i don’t know if they can take money back from us but are we looking at if our enrollment does not come back up how we’re going to deal with that decrease in our enrollments going forward as a result of coven and what we were unable to bring for offer our students in marblehead this past year thank you sandra john do you want to she’s referring to the october 1st sims submission which they use for budgeting purposes and

1:04:25 certainly michelle and i and eric for special education use those numbers for planning purposes and this budget reflects that and i think one thing that bears noting is that bright tutor to teacher sandra your points is well taken i’m a licensed mental health counselor in the state of massachusetts and so that’s obviously a piece that i’m well aware of and is near and dear to my heart and i advocate strongly for we’ve got a guidance counselor going in at the village school and we’ve got that bright tutor to teacher which is the program at the high school that supports students who are coming off of medical situations and hospitalizations many of which end up being psych hospitalization so where we are looking to uh

1:05:12 expand on on the ability to support that can i just add one piece to that too um sandra thanks for your comments i appreciate them i think we all do um just a few other just to follow up on a few other things you said too in terms of enrollment for next year dr bucky has surveyed um those students who um are not enrolled this year to get a feel for what that enrollment will look like in september and making sure that we’re budgeting for those so that is incorporated in the enrollment and budget numbers that dr bucky presented today um tonight and also um the contract tracing with the pool testing that did come up today in our reopening meeting and so i agree you know we need to make sure that

1:05:58 our nurses are supported and um you know our administrators are working with our especially at the high school because that’s where we’re seeing the you know the largest number of cases um to make sure that that the nurses there are supported so um just wanted to let you know that we are working through that i think it bears noting too i don’t think this has been said in a public meeting at this point but that the state is going to be the dusty is going to be continuing to fund pool testing for the remainder of the school year

1:06:30 david did you want to weigh in well i just wanna you know it kind of dovetails on to what nan talked about earlier that you know as our assistant superintendent you know she’s working with others and there’s just discussions taking place about how covid will have impacted students over the next year five and you know to five years and that will continue to evolve and i think that’s something that clearly nan and our staff are on top of and um to um the earlier comments we’ll we’ll need to i’m sure the district will be aware of that and we’ll need to

1:07:17 address those issues as they come up and as they’re identified so i’m glad to hear that we’re on it but it is a good point and we’ll need to be aware of those things going forward thanks david um so i’ve actually got one more hand up uh julie duggan hi can you hear me yep it’s julie duggan 18 dodge road um i am a co-president of the pco at the high school and i just want to clarify that we are not fundraising for smart boards we did fund some smart boards recently um but we did we are not fundraising for any smart board so i just want to make sure that misinformation is not out there thank you thank you very much i had heard it the other way but thank you for that clarification um do you

1:08:03 know how many sport smart boards you funded and how recently we funded six of them four of them um from the well all of them from the pco but two of them were from an anonymous donor and we just we just approved that at our last meeting thanks julie all right i don’t have any uh further hands up so i will ask the committee if anybody has anything that they would like to weigh in on um you know this we’re not voting tonight so this conversation will continue um but i had said that i would let the anybody on the committee sort of make any comments that they wanted to make so if anybody would like to say anything david you’ve got your uh mic on did you want to say something

1:08:49 yeah i’ll start out by saying i i think it’s been a really intensive process this year unlike many years where um this year we we’ve had some challenges related to covid but we also you know have dr bucky coming in at his first year but i i want to thank um nan and the administrators and michelle cresta who’s in her second year for just you know having a total team approach to the budget something that bill mccaldiff carried over from last year and i think it served us well last year and i’m glad to see that that process has continued to move forward so thanks for everybody

1:09:34 for everybody for everybody in the schools that have continued to work on that and come up with their priorities and communicate those things and i also want to thank you know you know jason silva the finance committee and the town for what we’ve done you know these budgets are our town budgets there’s the school budget and there’s the town budget and we’ve worked through this process to come up with what the priorities are to identify what funding we can use for what our needs are and i think it’s just been a really collaborative process and even from tonight as dr bucky said things will change

1:10:20 two weeks from now there will be something different that might come up between now and town meeting but i think we’ve all done you know really good work to get us to this point and to provide a budget that we can um that we can work with to help uh you know meet the needs of the school so i just wanted to make that statement and thank everybody who’s been involved thanks david anybody else before i say a few things megan yeah i have something um so yes i am going to second david on that i want to thank dr bucky and his team and all the work that the leadership team has um has done over the past few months i know you’ve put a lot of work into this not that you’ve

1:11:07 had anything else to focus on so you know i am appreciative of all that work um i’m really hope well actually one other thing i want to say is that i actually think this public hearing on the budget has been the most productive one i’ve been a part of so i want to thank the community too for their engagement and for the questions that they asked and i’m happy that we could you know answer some of those as we went along um i also hope that this that dr bucky’s presentation cleared up some of the questions that had been raised over the past few weeks by the community i think on tuesday night we had um you know there are probably a few sensational sound bites i think is maybe how i’ll turn them that maybe

1:11:55 cause some confusion at best um and i think the one that i really just want to make sure that we address is um that we are defunding our schools because that simply is not the case in my now this is my third budget season on the school committee um i would say the selectmen the town administrator and the finance committee have been incredibly supportive of our schools and they’ve worked with us collaboratively to find solutions to meet our needs and i think that this budget is another example of that so i do want to thank the town dr bucky the school committee everyone who’s kind of worked on this and gotten us to this point

1:12:43 um and i’ll leave it at that thank you thanks megan sarah hi so i just have some notes as we went along with what people said um so you know we started off with miss kindle speaking about her concerns about reliance on one time funding for reoccurring revenue um and i think was david that spoke to the fact that there’s uh a move in government in schools and in towns to move towards this um one-time grant funding and i just want to be clear there and no and no municipality and no business and nothing i have ever seen is it advisable to use one-time funding for reoccurring needs so if you have

1:13:30 one-time funding for a one-time expense absolutely that’s what you do but what i’m seeing in this budget is one-time grant funding for telephones that we knew we needed for um wiring that was outdated that we knew we needed for a math curriculum that we’ve known for a few years we needed and and also not not just the force thought that we knew we needed these things but that they’re not one-time expenditures they’re three-year reoccurring and our funding source at this point is not secured i mean i know david made some points to that he’s hopeful with all this extra coven money that’s coming in you know some of that will come to us um and my assumption is definitely some more will come to us but

1:14:16 we would be really remiss to not also assume unforeseen expenditures from cobid will come for us learning loss external social emotional needs um even more technology i feel like the technology piece just keeps coming and coming to coming and one of the biggest pieces i worry that hasn’t been built in is this idea of um we will continue to have students that cannot return to school because of health needs um you know it will not be a gigantic portion enough perhaps to you know require what we’ve had to date but it will be you know more significant than one or two now those students will need to either be handled as essentially

1:15:03 medical outplacements whether that’s through an actual medical outplacement facility or whether it’s through programs like tech and these other ones where we’re currently using and and quite frankly getting really not great feedback from our the users on this so i’m hoping we stay away from those but none of that comes without a cost and all of those costs is what this coven money is kind of the net is there to catch us on that and i ha i i continue to have concerns that you know we hear we heard from michelle the other night that we are now putting our applications in now because we have to because we need the monies now but that other towns that are you know waiting

1:15:49 till i think she said maybe july 1 um and that we’re burning through what we have quicker and what we’re burning through it on is actually stabilizing elements that even if covid disappeared or never came would still be here um we would we would still need to make math curriculum we still would um need phones i mean poor dr bucky i called and it was like i said to him like this should be on a camera because like the phone failed well he’s trying to talk to me um and this is this is a constant occurrence and it’s been for a long time covid did not create this can we use the cobin money you know it’s it’s not for me you know well actually it actually for all five

1:16:35 of us decided we can do that but um you know the guidelines come and if they fit into some of those then you know so be it if that’s what we have to do but i do feel strongly that we are continuing a reliance on one-time funding for reoccurring costs and that is a concern the staffing of the nurse again sandra callahan made excellent points um you know the i the spaces we built into brown you know the vice principal’s office alone at the square footage price was an extra 50 000 if we didn’t need it if we weren’t going to staff it that’s 50 000 for one office now if we don’t need a bcba and we did an office for them that’s not you know so you can you can

1:17:21 get the theme of how things continue to kind of add up that if we if these were not staff positions we needed to then you know we didn’t i i must have completely missed in um the budget and i apologize for this where we added the faculty for the stem program and that’s on me i didn’t see it but i did hear dr bucky say that we added um faculty to to teach this stem curriculum at the new school um so if just offline if later you can email me or tomorrow or whenever i i just didn’t see it and that’s that’s my fault um you know again the out placements i am concerned about that planning where that that money’s going to come um

1:18:07 and you know people noted that every year we do continue to lose students to private and while we save money because less students our enrollment goes down we adjust our faculty um we don’t want to be losing students to private because they don’t feel they can get what they need now so that exodus is a concern um and then just for clarification and two of the budget meetings i was in i remember megan asking could we put the phones under the esser and i thought michelle had said no so it says it it says that we’re using one-time funding for that so i was just wondering if you could identify what the one-time funding source is for the

1:18:53 phones in the tech because i thought we could put the tech under the esser but we couldn’t put the phones so if again between now and next week um you can just let me know what that funding source is that would be good um if we collaborate for an hr in tech position which i think the collaboration is fine um then could we um is there any type of agreement will a portion of those salaries come off of our operating budget and move on to the town’s operating budget or um is it that you know they’ll stay on ours but it’s a help that we can give to them and collaborate um and i don’t know that i have an opinion one way or another and i’m just one i’m

1:19:38 wondering if there’s potential more savings coming our way if we do find a way to collaborate those if we can you know estimate that half of those salaries will come off our books um on your slides dr bucky are we relying on any foreign tuition from revolving funds because with the current state of affairs with travel and we’re not okay because that’s um and and then the k tuition i know that was a concern i had last year we got in a little trouble with that this year um i did see that their nest um the acronym that we use for our enrollment um is projected yes thank you

1:20:24 is projecting a 23 enrollment drop over the next nine years um that’s that’s kind of a you know an eye opener from two points of view i mean we just built a school for 450 so that’s a little bit like you know a little unnerving because we’ll see the drop at the lower grades first um but also do they base that on less students or students in uh marvel head at the time or that they and they foresee our exodus to private continuing to grow um and i did see we’re dropping two sections two classroom teachers at both the first and second grade at brown

1:21:09 um that is correct i beyond the fact that we built it for five sections so again those are two more classrooms um that we i guess didn’t need especially for rec enrollments going down another 23 over nine years um i am concerned historically our largest jump has been um first grade at bell has each year picked up you know 10 to 20 kids upon on top of what happens from kindergarten we didn’t see that this year in from just you know that kind of being my pool as far as families i know i think it’s because a lot of those families chose to stay private that extra year we have a lot of

1:21:55 schools in town that do provide private for that that age group but don’t go all the way through um but you know i have a concern with dropping those levels when we have historically seen that jump up um and they’ve always come in to what will be the brown community that they’ve they’ve oh anybody new in district at that age group has always come into the brown community um so those are our mainly my points um and any clarifications i’m fine if you know i get those in the next few days just so i have that data when we when we are expected to vote next week

1:22:39 um yeah i i will just uh speak to a couple things i want to make sure that i didn’t misspeak the stem space is outfitted we ordered the supplies materials small wares there is not a dedicated teacher in the budget sarah you did not miss anything so if people heard my answer to that question as we added a teacher for that we did not classroom teachers that are currently at brown will have accessibility to the space to use the supplies for stem activities but we have not hired a separate stem teacher um and then the other things uh the sarah i can send you the nasdaq report if you ever have insomnia it’ll be great

1:23:24 it is a co what is it a morbidity analysis against birth rates and so it’s a rather extensive document i think i sent it to school committee but i’ll send it again because it really goes into the deep weeds of how they come up with those numbers and i was recently in a community that had to do a building project because they built a school for 450 20 years ago and now it has set it had 700 in it and so i would you know i would want to be potentially where we are in marblehead where we have a facility that could house more children rather than constructing something that’s too small

1:24:11 from the beginning and so we may have the luxury of space but i have never been in a school where every inch people don’t find a use for it and so the fact that we have it i think sarah you have said if you build it they will come it is probably the reality that we will find uses for all of those space i don’t know the conversations about leadership at brown school versus glover uh that preceded me but i did not know that there was ever an indication that there would be an assistant principal although you know if you look at the building plans there’s an assistant principal’s office did i were there other things sarah that you touched upon that i didn’t

1:24:57 dare you you did excellent there was one or two but i think that they were um funding funding source questions so i can follow up with you and michelle on that great well just sorry go ahead no no because i’m gonna make a joke and you probably have something serious to say all right well we’ll wait for your joke and you know with anticipation but just um just to clarify my question around the technology piece was around applying the e-rate so that my understanding is we cannot apply to the telephones so that is just to clarify that was where my question was to michelle in previous meetings certainly and i know steven uh can connect with sarah as well on the e-rate and the funding and how we’re using uh stimulus money to fund the technology

1:25:43 piece of that again i want i want to be clear that everything’s above board that we are not trying to

1:25:52 make a shaded gray area for how these funds are are used and the history in this district i can appreciate the hesitancy but we are doing our due diligence to make sure that the decisions for using stimulus money are not only the letter or not only the spirit but the letter of the law as well

1:26:16 thanks and my joke was when sarah called me i said it was a saturday night live skit that you just can’t make it up that she was patched into me and then gone telephone should not be that hard in 2021. um emily i think you’re oh maybe david’s hand was up first um so just i don’t does anybody want to talk over somebody else no i i’m sorry i didn’t put my hand down from the previous time okay okay um i just wanted to make a quick note about using the one-time funding um for this year’s budget i think i know it’s not ideal i know

1:27:02 it’s not great for budgeting but we’re also in a not great situation beyond our school with the pandemic and i think that we have to kind of be creative this year and we are like it’s been said we’re starting a strategic plan we’re going to take all of these into consideration create numbers and try to make a plan and a budget that’s going to work for us so i just want to say that i think this year this budget is good and it’s great and sarah if you keep talking about it but what’s your solution do you have something a different way to do it there’s a lot of criticism but what’s the do you have a different way you’d like

1:27:49 to see it done yeah no i i would like us to um advocate for getting what we need and we and and that can’t that that can’t start a week before i mean this is work that you know when we started talking about this back in january we should have been doing when we got first got this priority list back in it was a january or february but it’s been several weeks i mean uh quite honestly this is work that should have started you know two years ago this is this is constant work that needs to be done and well just to two years ago question can i answer okay yep you can okay so

1:28:37 you know i i haven’t i i feel like there’s a lot of people that have said you know we can’t get the funding because of the pandemic but when you look at our numbers actually as heartbreaking as it is and i do find it heartbreaking that we have benefited financially from a pandemic to be perfectly honest marblehead is lost i can’t remember if it’s 30 or 35 citizens you know people’s lives are forever changed what has happened to our students you know our staff just everybody every one of us even every one of us sitting at this table has been negatively impacted the one thing that hasn’t been negatively impacted and i would argue the only thing that has not been negatively impacted is our budget

1:29:23 because we have had a tremendously huge influx of funding that funded things like i don’t even know countless laptops countless technology that that we have needed for years and i see john’s head head shaking and i’m sure stephen has like explained this to him and he knew so much of it before but these were needs we’ve always had so to say we’re in this pickle because of covid the only thing that covet has helped in in our world is our finances it made them better it gave us a funding source to fix past past issues that we haven’t been able to maintain

1:30:11 so i i actually to say we can’t you know we have to tighten our belt because a covet our belt’s not the biggest belt we’ve ever owned because of covid and that i i find concerning um you know if covet had not hit we were still going to need a math curriculum we were still going to need an hr director we were still going to need technology and phones and ipads and all this stuff but but like it rained money from this horrific event in all of our lives and like i said the only benefit has been the money because certainly i can’t find another benefit um and so i i do think it’s disingenuous to say we have to tighten our belt to get

1:30:56 through kovid because covet brought a boatload of money with it if nothing else well exactly we’re not i don’t think anyone said we’re tightening our belt we’re actually using the money to fund things we’re doing exactly what you’re talking about i just want to make that clear and also um yeah so just thank you everyone for the budget work thanks emily um you know i com i completely agree with that i don’t think we’ve all said that we’re tightening the belt um i think you know this the the piece with covid that you know that that sarah is referring to absolutely is the silver lining of it there’s you know i would make the case that there’s a little bit more silver linings uh than just money coming in for laptops but you know it also has been an

1:31:42 incredibly difficult year um and the incredibly difficult year piece to it was that instead of you know when we hired john last or two januaries ago we had him coming in and immediately starting on a on a strategic plan using you know the the information that he was going to gather upon his with his entry plan and then putting that into the works with you know working with nan working with eric working with michelle all the district administrators to hopefully you know we were hoping to have set up for an override this year and then covet hit and we spent the summer figuring out how we were going to reopen our schools and educate our children so to

1:32:25 the over dramatization of a lot of things is

1:32:34 mind-boggling to me to to put it nicely um like the scare tactics around this stuff it’s it’s well said gross um and i’m i’m kind of done with it the process around this but excuse me

1:32:52 you need to pause look it up point of order you are personalized the chairman is speaking excuse me sarah you can’t make sense sarah sarah you can’t speak over someone i’ve muted you by the way you cannot speak over someone just because you say point of order if you would like others to start doing that to you we can start doing that to you i am speaking i have waited and listened to everybody else speak

1:33:24 the manipulative pieces of this need to stop the process within this budget has been all above board we are we are unfortunately not going for an override this year code has impacted things a lot we’ve gotten some good things out of it like the money and many many bad things those bad things are going to follow us into the future so to kind of conflate the two it just doesn’t make any sense to me so i want us to move forward on this we have had a very collaborative process with the town this year they have been they have given us we have gotten as a school department from federal funds and state funds a lot of money we’ve also gotten the town has

1:34:09 gotten a lot of money and they have given the schools additional funds to help us through this time we know that there is i think six million dollars coming into the town that’s sort of the the estimates they have they have not looked over us at any point my assumption based on all historical data is that they will not look over us again so i i just need that to be very clear to everybody on this call we set forth with a list of priorities and those priorities were looked at over and over as they always are some kind of fell off for for various reasons we you know i’m about to do a home project

1:34:54 and i’m having conversations about things that i’m going to cut from my list of priorities this is how budgets go we have only a certain amount of money whether you’re talking about the schools or you’re talking about the town an override is is one way in which we fix some of these things again it’s not happening this year so to say that we have cuts and reductions i don’t see cuts and reductions i see we we have we are getting more money next year than we got this year than we got the previous year and so cuts mean that we are losing money cuts mean that that things are going away and we are adding things to our schools to make them better we are not

1:35:39 level funded this year we have added money to our budget so i really want to set the record straight that that cincom has been incredibly helpful in this jason has been incredibly helpful in this the slackman have been incredibly helpful in this and we will continue to move forward and work with them you know in the way that we should you know i one of the pieces that has kept me sane in throughout the pandemic is the peloton bike that i that i purchased and their big thing john knows because i send him silly clothes all the time but their big thing is together we go far and that statement rings true here just in spades that together

1:36:25 as a town and schools working together we will go far and that’s where i come out tonight well said sarah thank you so if i may now through the chair

1:36:40 sure so i i you know continually am amazed at the collaboration i see from jason and my concern and all my comments have surrounded about quite honestly and they’re reflective on me too because we are not here as individuals any of us any one of us we are here as a collective body and it’s only through our votes and our emotions that we achieve things and my concern is we have not made the votes and the motions to do listen we didn’t bring the town information that we were ready for all this stuff and i understand i almost feel and i’m not saying this is on john last year when we said this is not the year

1:37:27 we knew covent we were we were we we said it in the same meeting that we were talking about covet with bill so i feel like i i personally feel we didn’t set john up for success because we knew it was covid we knew the impossible hurdle he and nan and our building administrators and everybody else we’re going to be up against with getting our schools open and we said last year we need to wait and and next year’s the year to do it when when if if we knew covid was going to keep us from doing that we shouldn’t have put that expectation out there that has been my point is we knew the variable that we’re saying now is the reason we couldn’t do it we knew that variable last year when we said this was going to

1:38:14 be the year so i my point is we just need to stop doing that we need to stop saying okay next year’s a year and then looking back and saying well we knew that variable when we said it like we knew bill was going to be our interim but something changed we knew john was going to be dealing with a horrific year as a first superintendent but like this is my point we keep doing this and by we it’s a collective we it’s no more you or me it’s as a governing body we are doing this as a collective unit my issue is not with you know the board of selectmen or or jason my issue is because quite frankly they have their job and they do

1:39:00 their job and our job is to advocate for a budget that is reflective of what we want an education to look like in marblehead and maybe it’s that this is not what i want our education system maybe to answer emily’s question that’s my issue this is not what i want an education to look like in marblehead and if we advocated for something else and then we get to this point then that’s where we got you but i don’t feel we started by advocating for what we want an education to look like in marblehead and that’s where i feel we went astray you know whether it be covet or whatever else i don’t feel we ever had that vision of a portrait of a graduate

1:39:45 and and i think that that’s a really good exercise and i’m not dramatizing anything sarah and my point was i’d like this to be about not p personal people and i feel like quite often unfortunately that’s what it becomes um and if we could move away from that then we can do you know be better together or whatever peloton says can i just i just want to clarify and then maybe we can move on but um this list of priorities is the needs that our superintendent and our leadership team identified it is the need that they have identified in their buildings and in our district secondly we have said all along that we will be doing a strategic plan

1:40:32 and john is ready to start kicking that off and that strategic plan the plan that comes from working together as a district and with our community and community and town leadership to come up with what we want our school district to look like in the long term is the strategic plan and then we use that to budget for the long term to do it backwards is not going to get us where we need to be i i agree i don’t i just don’t feel like we at any point start the process as a school committee that is what we’re about to do that is what we talked about two meetings ago with kicking off the strategic plan david david oh you’re muted

1:41:21 not not seeing any other people from the public that want to comment i make a motion to adjourn the public hearing a second a second all right i don’t think we actually need a motion or a second um so i will just adjourn the uh the budget hearing at 7 41. thank you

1:41:42 all right that takes us into our regular meeting um which starts off with commendations mr bauer we’ve got you up first with the high school thank you very much always a pleasure to be here i’ll try not to go too long but if i had a list of all the accommodations um it would be a long meeting here and i know nobody wants to be here any longer um i i’d so appreciate it i was thinking of a theme and i think the theme is moving forward seeing the activities that are they’re coming to life seeing our deca program in virtual competitions at the state level we had a number of students who placed very high in fact we have a state championship quiz bowl team which is outstanding and miss caliban and her group has done outstanding work

1:42:28 our unified basketball team had a huge win today over danvers and just it just gives a great feeling of pride to see all of our students and just bringing the community together performing arts uh they’re moving along they’re preparing for the spring musical the 25th annual putnam county spelling bee so if i’m in there i hope they give me an easy word to spell our visual arts department uh the arts auction is is moving along and they’re preparing for the senior art show so that’s wonderful are the positive culture and climate that’s building with our sel committee and the the work that dr slavitt has done with this committee that has brought students into play getting their feedback and suggestions for more connections you know i i we’re hearing music between the blocks now and they’ve been playing

1:43:14 some good 80s music and some trivia and quizzes and it’s all really good and positive also our team harmony that’s getting into our ninth grade health classes and in promoting positivity um and not being a bystander and just the great work that they’ve done um before i move into the last piece i do have to thank our pco for their efforts to help vaccinate our staff um and just it’s just wonderful and just seeing the positivity with that and a special shout out to the capitalist family because i know jared was uh accommodated last meeting by mr fox i know how many he brought through but his his brother noah did a wonderful job too so thank you to the cavaliers family as well as all the pco lastly i think just moving forward for april 5th everybody’s mind is on that

1:43:59 and just breaking it down into four quick areas our custodial staff who i mentioned in the last meeting has just been outstanding they moved all those desks and chairs back so this week we had a transition seeing how things would be um and they haven’t batted an eye they’ve just been wonderful and all the little pieces that each teacher their needs they’re working through that list and we’ll be ready to go on the fifth on monday are teachers and staff just outstanding every time i try to get into as many classes as i can and just seeing the wonderful lessons and um you know the the piece that seems to me as they’re moving forward and just doing a wonderful job but also their input for the preparation has been outstanding the little details that are really critical um deanna mcmahon has been our rock from the health department she is you know

1:44:46 we lean on her she’s kept us safe her solid no-nonsense approach is just welcomed and i know our staff and other staff throughout the district uh reach out to her all hours and she’s just just been a huge help for all of us and then last but not least our guidance department who have help with the transition of students coming back in or going out to the learning model change but everything is moving forward because they’re also meeting with all of our students to plan for next year’s scheduling and putting on great guidance programs so you know i know that i can go on and on and on but i’m just really proud of our staff i’m proud of our students particularly our seniors who’ve been extremely resilient and i think it’s going to be exciting to see them all come back together also our cohorts see a remote learning cohort who’ve done an outstanding outstanding job and they

1:45:31 need recognition too because it’s not been easy for them particularly freshmen who haven’t been in the building um and they’ve just done a great job and and lindsey page and her leadership working with them it’s been outstanding um and then certainly just finishing it up with our families and i appreciate all the supports that the families have provided they’ve been very patient it’s not easy with all the transitions and um they get our kids in they figured out the traffic circle this morning i took away the barriers yesterday we made it through injury-free so we’re looking forward to a great start on monday so anyway just very happy to be part of it looking forward to it again just just very grateful for all the support we’ve received thanks so much dan those are all really great and and highly appropriate commendations

1:46:17 commendations commendations um i’ve got one commendation that i will um give and then i’ll ask everybody else if they’ve got one um i just want to recognize the efforts of the building secretaries uh they’ve been really important and just a huge part of organizing and coordinating with the principals to help with the schedules and then with all of the sub coverages and with the parents who are coming in to volunteer for the um lunches and everything um so you know i just i want to give a good shout out uh to them um and in that i will also thank uh our our own lisa demir because she has been instrumental in getting all of that

1:47:02 together um she’s running all of the quarries and the fingerprints and everything and um that’s time-consuming and very detailed work um so we’re we’re all really grateful for all of the work and efforts that has gone into uh getting kids back into the buildings more and to the parents that are volunteering uh for those lunch positions as well does anybody else have any commendations this evening all right all right um actually the superintendent’s gonna jump in go right ahead um first the collaboration around the budget has been great but that work can get so tunneled and get me trapped at widger road and so i went to the unified basketball game today and i’m not going to get

1:47:49 choked up but it is exactly what i needed because it was it’s what we go into this business to do and to see the joy and the fun and the teamwork and all those life lessons it made doing the budget presentation easier this evening so unified basketball team shout out from the superintendent you’re going to make us all cry thanks john all right that leads us into our minutes um and i believe if i’m not mistaken it was um just 2 9 21 that made it into the dropbox so i will ask for a motion to approve the minutes from february 9 2021

1:48:35 so moved megan moved second emily second were there any additions or clarifications that need to be added on that one

1:48:45 all right uh i will call roll call sarah gold yes david harris yes emily baron yes sarah fox yes and megan taylor yes all right that motion carries five to zero thanks guys um john that leads us back to you with the superintendent’s report would you like to introduce the next speaker or would you like me to um either way you go ahead all right um so we have joining us this evening is uh one of our teachers of the high school miss candice sliney and then jody smith a member of our community and jody forgive me i’m going to forget all of the ways in which you um support and give to marblehead so when you turn your camera on and are able to speak feel free to fill us in um because you’re you’re

1:49:31 you’re you’re of great value i know um so miss sliney i know that you’ve got a presentation to give so i’m going to make you a co-host and they are here to talk with us this evening about juneteenth and the north shore juneteenth organization uh that they are a part of okay welcome thank you for having us let’s see all right so let me put this in the present mode i’m hoping you can see we can oh phew [Laughter] all right well um yes i’m candace laney i’m a spanish teacher at the high school

1:50:18 and i am the team harmony advisor at the high school and i’ve i first did that in 2005 and then took some time off my kids were young and then i’ve been doing it for a while jody smith is a liaison for the north shore juneteenth association her skill her children went through marblehead public schools and her daughter sophia was part of team harmony when she was there but not when i was a leader so she is a wealth of information for us about this great organization that juneteenth association north shore association um so i’m also a part of the marblehead task force against discrimination

1:51:03 discrimination discrimination i’ve been a member for two years and during one of our more recent meetings jody and nicole mclean who started the north shore juneteenth association and who is a army veteran she recognized that there wasn’t a lot of opportunity on the north shore to celebrate the juneteenth celebration and for the black communities it is something very common um in in many um parks there’s celebrations and big cookouts and so she recognized that need on the north shore and so it’s just been um a wonderful

1:51:51 organization that um is also promoting um the contributions of black americans so um do you know what juneteenth is um it’s the annual um commemoration there we go that marks the day when the uh general gordon granger reached texas to inform the enslaved people there that they were free and it occurred two years after um the emancipation proclamation so not a lot of people know about this history but in the black community um it is wide widely celebrated and almost considered to be um black america black

1:52:36 american independence day okay so now we just hang on um okay so i think i may have gone back too far sorry one second okay so um the juneteenth organization provides opportunities um for businesses and schools to buy uh gear from them to promote juneteenth so there are a couple of options they have these juneteenth banners that um are very durable and they cost 95 and then a smaller um flag which costs 60 dollars um at the presentation um through

1:53:24 the tfad is what i tend to call it um we it was discussed to have a ceremony in marblehead to raise the flag um this june um not on actual juneteenth but sometime sometime in june early june and i thought it would be a great idea if we’re raising the flag in marblehead either albert hall or old town hall wherever it may happen wouldn’t it be wonderful to get the banner in all of the schools um and then to also possibly raise the flag which i’ll talk about in a second um so let’s see i can’t read it because i think there we go okay so um the massachusetts department of elementary and secondary education updated the school calendar so in 2021

1:54:11 will be the first time that juneteenth is officially celebrated as a holiday so what would i like to see happen for the marblehead public schools is to provide a juneteenth banner for each school in the district in a high visibility area and granted it’s only a symbolic gesture but it’s a start

1:54:34 the organization offers an elementary school art program which can be bought as one program and shared throughout the schools so that would cost about two hundred dollars purchase a juneteenth flag for the marblehead high school caf cafeteria which costs sixty to accompany the recently donated gay pride flag and black lives matter flag plex um [Music] fund the professional study group so this is probably the most important part for me as we’re talking about budget and and big term long-term goals um it would be such a good thing to consider um [Music] to examine the curricula what’s available what do we have where what are

1:55:19 we missing and one of the um parts of the department of education that i something really spoke to me at a presentation a couple years ago um was the idea of the windows and mirrors and the curricula so we want we want the curriculum to be a place where kids see themselves celebrated but also for other for them to learn about others experiences and so for us to really have a study group that formally looks at each you know each grade level and say you know what’s missing and there whoops oh my goodness [Music] there are um there are many many resources on the doe website that can help us like the text inventory

1:56:05 guidance or the culturally responsive social emotional um actually when i shut that off there we go um all right and then the last thing um is the black lives matter flags and the gay pride flag so at the high school we have the american flag in the cafeteria and um the graduating team harmony officers of the class of 2021 thought it would be a great idea for them to purchase a black lives matter flag for the cafeteria and we also had a donation for the gay pride flag and we thought it would be fabulous um to have those represented in the cafeteria in a highly visible spot and my daughter and some of the officers

1:56:52 last year spoke at a board of selectmen meeting and something that she said really um really hit me about how seeing that flag uh makes people feel safe and supported and it’d be the same thing by adding a black lives matter flag to our cafeteria in along with the um gay pride flag and hopefully um in june a june teen flag as well okay i was way too that took longer than i had thought i’m sorry about that that often becomes the case any questions sarah you’ve got your hand up um um i think this is wonderful and i think you know

1:57:38 you know you know thank you for laying out all the details and everything and that that is an incredibly small financial ask for something that has the potential to have a significant impact so i i think that this is great one thing i wanted to ask this is a follow-up um i i had a chance to hear you speak a little bit at the task force against discrimination meeting and at that point you talked about how how team harmony um was going was planning to go into the village school and work with some of their students which is i you know i look forward to hearing more about because i think that’s wonderful um is there a chance for them to kind of open a dialogue more about juneteenth during those visits or um

1:58:24 um um maybe as we get closer to that maybe because they’ve already built a rapport with those students maybe do some type of activity with them or something to kind of hide just bring in another step to further it um and then i also think about you know this isn’t necessarily related to or at all related to juneteenth but if you have this group um you know do they want to at some point over the next several months you know look at some books that they would like to see at all levels of our our library and we can maybe make a list of things we’d like to add to kind of bring in more awareness of you know this important date but also other important events

1:59:12 that kind of would speak to things so it was just well we had you here i thought i’d throw that out there and thank you for your presentation

1:59:22 yes um so this week we actually presented in all freshman and sophomore health classes so they use their like very limited free blocks to donate their time to do that um we filmed a video for um vets to be sent soon um to uh for them to use in the advisories and next week the date had to change a couple of times with the change in calendars so next week they’re working with village and doing those um 1 115 to 215 or 130 actually to 215 sessions with those village kids i think those are really great ideas but the program that we have now is sort of like all set and they put a lot of time into

2:00:07 this but i think yes going forward um and i think that’s why i thought the elementary art program for you know for only two hundred dollars to be used throughout the elementary schools would be since it’s the very first year that um that it’s recognized as a holiday in the state of massachusetts i think it’s really important that all of the elementary schools i would love to see it school-wide you know have everyone just stop pause and recognize what this is and um so i do think getting the banners as soon as possible getting the art program set and um yeah and you know just keep keeping at it thank you so much for that i could just jump in real quick

2:00:53 absolutely sarah fox asked about books if you’re interested in books especially around black lives and black contributions there are fantastic lists online you don’t even have to look them up if you want to email me i can send you the lists and if there’s budget to be able to add them into the libraries they can easily do that that’s great and every year parents donate books um i know at least at the elementary school it’s always been a thing on children’s birthdays um parents can donate a book to the library and there’s like a little sticker that goes in it or whatever so if that list if we can even get it up on our website somehow that might be something that parents um are interested in sourcing from just to kind of build that base that’s a great idea

2:01:40 thank you both um for coming emily did you want to say something i just saw your hand wave real quick um when the banners arrive if we agree to do this which i really hope we do um can there be just like a quick little thing that each teacher can explain to the students in every grade classroom i don’t know if it goes out to families but just to broaden the awareness even into our community because i’m sure people don’t know or know but don’t know a lot so just trying to get as much knowledge out i think using the visual and then just a little blurb i think that’s a fabulous idea so but i think it’s great and thank you

2:02:26 yeah i i think that’s it you know if we if we’re going to do this we definitely want to be understanding and actually educating our students as to as to what this means um i know i had worked in an agency at one point where i was one of three white people and still didn’t come away from that with an understanding of what juneteenth actually was um and it was a big celebration at that agency um so i think you know after learning about it this past over this past year it’s it’s you know it’s one of these pieces that um our history books tend to overlook so i’m glad that we’re starting to look into that and i think you know if i was a betting gal um i think our strategic plan is going to have something to do with some diversity and equity uh pieces to it so i think this fits nicely in in that direction as well um so i

2:03:12 thank you both for coming this evening and filling us all in on this and um and for and for you know being a part of this within our school systems and and within our community

2:03:25 uh not to belabor the point because um i think all the ideas that have been shared are great and i do want to thank you for both coming to us to present because i do think this is an important stuff topic and date to make sure that we start to push that information out and i’m glad we’re going to celebrate it i’m glad we’re gonna start to teach our children about it um so i think this is definitely something i’d like to see us move forward on thank you thank you both very much and actually on this school committee i think uh as lisa and john and i were talking we’ll see the juneteenth piece come back hopefully at our next meeting because it does not impact our calendar this year because we end before juneteenth but next year it is a state holiday so we will

2:04:11 actually have to amend our calendar a little bit for next school year so we’ll be bringing that i didn’t put it on tonight because i was worried that tonight was going to be rather long so but thank you both very much and thank you for all the work that you’re doing on this thank you so much john well that’s a tough fact to follow because the news in the district update is not near as compelling i’m talking about us getting our hands smacked um you had available to you in the dropbox uh the enforcement order for the green street property and it really follows the administrative axiom of no good deed goes unpunished we had been having conversations with local

2:04:59 bike group about being able to use some school property to build some bmx trails and ramps and things like that and those conversations were underway but work started ahead of those at the green street property and they were abutting wetlands and so we got the citation that you saw i had an opportunity to go out with the town engineer and the head of the conservation commission and look and the work that was done was not actually sanctioned by the by group that we were talking with so we’re meeting uh with um jason silva

2:05:45 and the bike people and uh sarah and i next week and then we have to appear at this hearing on thursday of next week um so no school committee but there will be a conservation hearing and i just wanted to bring it to the committee’s awareness and answer any questions that i can i’m not sure that i can answer any questions at this point um but we did meet with the bike more people last friday to have some initial questions of clarification and i have just asked that we put a hold on the green street property we have installed some no trespass signs until this is resolved we have kind of given them a green light

2:06:31 for the high school property off the tennis courts um to continue that conversation but i think even if we get some sort of agreement the cat is out of the bag on green street right now and i wouldn’t want to exacerbate what’s already a citation so you probably have already heard about this out in the community but speaking about it in a public meeting um i thought would be a important next step for the committee yeah and thanks john um and obviously i’ve been a part of this i brought it to you guys a few weeks back uh sarah i do see your hand so i will i it’s definitely noted um and you know i think in all of this and i’m in complete agreement with just pausing on this green street while we kind of clean up anything that needs

2:07:16 literally and metaphorically um to be cleaned up but that you know i live near robinson’s farm i walk my dogs in wyman and steer every single weekend and so these these bike ramps and things are everywhere they’re in all of these spots um so i think to me this really highlights the need for this project to eventually be able to go forward um so i’m really hopeful for a quick resolution on this and so that we can kind of get back to talks um because you know i do think that like moore’s uh heart and heads are in the exact right place um you know this wasn’t sanctioned by them it was part of the confusion at the beginning of when this sort of all started to um get ruffled and so you know in meeting with them they they actually want to work with the kids to

2:08:03 understand how conservation works and the and the um you know the priority of wetlands and doing this in a way in which it doesn’t hurt our surrounding ecosystems but that you know that we’re all working together to as human beings be outside but also preserving um the the beauty and the nature that we’re going through sarah um and i think that learning piece is is excellent um just for clarification you said do you have to go to concom next thursday night we do so are we that’s when we were voting our budget on the calendar are we changing that that’s why i listed it in gray on the budget calendar because we are now needing to be at the conservation commission meeting so i don’t know if we want to i don’t

2:08:49 know if this is the time through the chair to schedule it at an earlier time and keep the april 8th date or pick a different day next week uh for that vote but i think people have april 8th on the calendar so if we could start at five or six in order for sarah and i to be able to go to the conservation meeting that’s the only agenda item right it’s not like a full meeting correct that is correct all right yeah that’s fine um and then is the has the group that built this been identified and i’m not asking for you to disclose because quite frankly i don’t want that information but i asked that just simply because as part of the learning curve could they be brought into the mix of you know whatever needs to be done

2:09:35 to repair and fix this land because again that’s another learning piece um i think the spirit was was good and genuine in that these kids are looking for a healthy outlet um however you know as we know from con common and there’s people that you there’s animals there’s plants there’s people that you know use our wetlands and all it’s very vitally important so i think the learning piece but also you know a little elbow grease of undoing what they did might be um a good learning curve as well so i didn’t know if we were able to find out who did it and if you know that was something they were willing to do but i think that would be a really good

2:10:21 piece of this puzzle as well um i don’t know that those that the kids have been identified um it’s certainly a question that we can follow up on that maybe is in the record somewhere yeah and maybe if it’s just like you know there won’t be retribution just please show up today and help um and then my other question is is there any harm that could come to the district like via a citation or a fine or um you know is there going to be a cost to us fixing this or are we in violation of it like is is there any real like result on the district and or liability um because we didn’t have the lease in place and now it kind of brings into the

2:11:07 liability piece and then lastly are we are we sure this is shut down it’s no longer in use because now that we know it was there there’s a bigger liability i would think

2:11:17 the short answer to your question is we don’t know when i went out with the town engineer and uh the head of the conservation commission i asked that because they were talking about taking down the ramps and bringing in dirt in in the superintendent’s mind those have dollars associated with it and so i was asking about is this a citation that comes with a cost and i think we’ll know more about that next thursday and the liability question is certainly one that we’re exploring both with our council and town

2:11:52 if there is a cost we could maybe just ask if we can identify this group if they can help towards that that cost absolutely emily um so i just i don’t know when the incident happened but i do know that there’s been some confusion about the land since we talked about it in our meeting i think a lot of people think thought that oh now we can go use it and i’m getting multiple people asking me about this and sending their kids up there and i literally told someone the other day don’t send your kid there anymore because it’s not happening yet so i think we need to clarify that as a district maybe in an update

2:12:38 you could put it in just say we can’t use it yet but explain what happened because people are super confused um and i just don’t want kids to go up there and get in trouble and then have that you know because that can really upset kids if because there’s they think they can use it so if we could just tell everybody to hold off until we say it’s a go absolutely is it too soon to talk about a community relations liaison but john you did say in your email you posted no trespassing signs right or you plan to yeah so i mean it’s pretty clear if there’s no trespassing signs that right and i totally agree with that but my friend i was telling her there should be signs up she’s like but the kids

2:13:24 aren’t going to read them you know if they don’t see them on their bike so i’m just i think just to cover everything just to absolutely and i’ll ask building principles particularly from probably i don’t know four to four up or do we have k to three students i think p to three i think one of my third graders friends loves to bike all over town so okay so i’ll ask each of the building principals to put something in a weekly update thanks and i can actually reach out to the head of school at tower as well and ask her to put that as well

2:13:59 all right any other questions okay the other uh district update that i have and it seems so bizarre to talk about my entry plan in april and this isn’t an april fool’s joke we’re still actually talking about it but i have asked sarah if we can have a special meeting yes me asking for an additional school committee meeting on the 29th so that i can present the entry plan the findings and then roll out the strategic planning process as we will undertake as a district and what that will look like which will start in earnest in early or in mid-may in identifying there be focus groups and there will be surveys and

2:14:45 so to outline that that will lead us into developing that strategic plan which will inform a budget and perhaps the priorities necessary to build a foundation for how we budget moving forward how do you like that for an obtuse way of getting to budgeting for the next year avoiding the o word 29th you said if i can just request that it start you know 6 30 or later if i can put that out there it makes it a lot easier and then um we must have a building committee meeting this week what or this this year please not this week um not this year this month um but with the vacation i just don’t

2:15:31 know like i wanna that we you know we might that will be another juggling offline thing but um that if we can keep as many of these meetings on thursday i think it makes it really easy much easier for the public to think school things happen on thursdays around 7. it’s just easier to kind of make that accessible i can definitely talk with david and make sure that we’re not i think lisa’s got them all marked on her big board calendar in her office as well

2:15:59 and then the in-person learning update is it’s happening we’re going to have in-person learning i think we’ve been talking about it and it’s super exciting uh that we’re getting to monday and i’ve actually heard dan and matt on the phone uh with different people very excited about this that there’s the next step toward normalcy and so our district k to 12 april 5th that’s our easter present that’s what the bunny’s bringing us is that we will be full in person at least seven to twelve will be half days five days a week and our pre-k to six students will be full days i’ll put it out there as a passover miracle as well there you go

2:16:47 no it’s very exciting and um you know we in we run over just you know matt and dan kind of spoke to it a little bit more in in reopening this morning and just assured a lot of the things that were said on tuesday night and um you know it’s just it is it’s really exciting and i’m it’s just such a huge step for the district and i’m just really hopeful that particularly at these older grades we are reducing distancing and quarantining and sort of making everybody a little antsy i really hope that again the community comes together wears masks all over the place um you know in carpools at little parties that that are you know hopefully occurring outside in their backyards masked distanced all that good stuff so that we can really continue this forward okay one thing if i gets the reopening is man

2:17:34 held a meeting was it last night man for remote for remote parents and as a remote parent i i just found it really um it was great to like have that that time to come to her and ask her our questions because our questions are very different than the bulk of the population um and you know she was candidate she didn’t have an answer she told you she didn’t have an answer she said put your information in the chat and i’ll get back to you so i just want to um from the remote population thank you for you know giving us that time to address our concerns as things do shift megan megan um so i said this in reopening but i think it bears repeating here for the larger audience too is um

2:18:20 this is a huge exciting milestone right like we’ve been working all over a year at this and everyone has put in like 120 of our waking hours to get here that’s families administration teachers custodians i mean across the board everyone has done that and you know when we talked about this back in february the end of february whenever it was we all realized it was a big undertaking right a big transition and the logistical nightmare especially at the older grades and i’ve just been so impressed and i’m just proud really to even be remotely associated with the work that the

2:19:05 principals and the leadership and every single person that has that works for our district has put in to get us here it’s been thoughtful it’s been um you know they’ve gone through every last detail and they’re really kicking off this event as an exciting milestone that it is so i just want to thank everybody and just come on april 5th it’s amazing thank you

2:19:36 thanks megan thanks megan i’m done all right great thank you john uh michelle that leads us on to you with the monthly finance monthly financial reporting including the coveted expenditure update do you need to share your screen sure if i could that’d be great i will make you a co-host

2:20:00 should be all set okay thank you make sure i’m pulling the right one up i just had it

2:20:09 no one i don’t know where it went let’s see

2:20:26 okay so the monthly financial report for the month ended february 28 2021 this is just over a month ago so probably at the next meeting we will be talking about march um but so as of february the year-to-date expenditures for the general fund were um 21 million eight 129 and fourteen dollars or fifty two percent of the operating budget um just a few areas that i typically report on or keep an eye on each month um the first is special education i am very extremely happy and excited to report that we are actually breaking even at the current moment in terms of our special education out of district tuition costs this is a number that has fluctuated um it started it last year at this time

2:21:13 it was a little bit higher significantly higher came down through the budget process as we had some decreases we had a unexpected shortfall when our circuit breaker funding came in this year earlier and we have been able to close that gap and we are down to four dollars difference right now so i am just thrilled to report that out so right now we are not projecting any deficit in that category and we have reached our april first deadline is when we are no longer responsible for any private school movements at this point in the year so um while we are responsible for some other move-ins if they should happen this year um private school is a big one so we have we have met that threshold and we should be in good shape for the rest of the year there fingers crossed

2:22:00 um in terms of substitute teaching costs we have spent 38 000 or 16 of that budget there is a little bit of an increase in terms of hourly wages for paris and tutors that have been paid that aren’t charged to this line but still we are significantly under budget in that area um a couple new accounts that i’m watching at this time is um first is custodian overtime we have seen a rapid rapid increase in that um area due to additional cleaning we have a couple extended leaves right now and staffing and we have been doing a lot of furniture moving at this point so we’ve had a lot of overtime in that area right now we are over budget by just over three thousand dollars um this

2:22:46 is also an account that typically we have run over budget each year that i can i can tell in terms of the trend um if the charges were correct and um i do expect that we will continue to run into deficit obviously and i’m projecting a shortfall of about 35 to 40 000 by the end of the year which i do think we’ll be able to absorb with another line so i’m not not concerned about it i’m just gonna keep an eye on it and the other area that i’m watching closely is unemployment compensation we have only um spent just over twenty four thousand in this area of a sixty thousand dollar budget but we are paid through the month of november however with all of the chaos happening at the unemployment agency in terms of

2:23:32 fraudulent claims and due to all the pandemic claims they are still way behind in reviewing their claims and they can retroactively charge us back as many months as they see um see to award an employee or a former employee so that is a bit of an unknown number um but i am projecting right now that we will probably run about 30 000 in deficit in that account for the year um we should also be able to absorb that without too much difficulty but i did just want to put it out there it’s something i’m watching each month um so that’s it really it’s nothing else exciting in terms of the general operating budget um but i do want to touch base a little more in depth on the

2:24:18 covet funding report um the actual covert funding report is through march 29th which is actually just earlier this week so you really have up-to-date information and not the february figures um i do have the covet funding status report that i will pull up here

2:24:40 so so far to date we have spent our actual paid out dollars 1 million 538 000 we have encumbered basically ordered or reserved another 568 thousand dollars and we’re anticipating expenditures of 269 000 but those are not specifically on goods that have been ordered or um committed to at this point but that total with all of those buckets will bring us to two million three hundred and seventy six thousand dollars this is absolutely amazing that we’ve we’ve come up with all of these funding sources or have been provided the opportunities of these funding sources um you know they’re all pretty much one-time funds there’s no recurring funds in here i mean recurring costs in here so that’s a great thing

2:25:27 and um last month i did detail you know the funding sources with the two new funding sources we had and the expiration dates and that’s on the bottom of the sheet here so this does not include any of the new funding that we’ve all been talking about we do not have certain figures on that yet but um we’re we’re keeping our ears and eyes open so as soon as we have any information on that we will be sure to share that um in terms of also the covet funding i know there’s been a lot of discussion about what we are earmarking the easter two grant for so i wanted to detail that a little bit um i did that include that in my memo which i apologize have to scroll way up again to that

2:26:12 so the earlier this week i had to submit for this grant um deadline was march 31st to be able to use it for this current year so even though it still carries forward we just had to submit for it in march so this is what our budget looked like when it was submitted and still what our plan is right now we are planning on spending roughly eighty one thousand dollars in supplemental classroom staffing and meeting students needs sixty five thousand dollars on air purifiers we have ordered some crazy number in addition to the ones we ordered in the fall i believe it’s another 268 air purifiers we’ve have ordered so that comes to a price tag of just under 65. um we made an allowance for kn 95 masks of 9 800 um

2:26:59 rolling laptop desks we had to remove a lot of teacher desks from the classrooms we’re adding more student desks back so we can fit all of the classrooms in all the students into the classroom rather and there’s about a twenty thousand dollar price tag on those part of this grant requires that we spend a portion on mental health supports for students so we are allocating twenty five thousand dollars the grant requires that at least ten thousand dollars be spent in this area we’re prepared to spend twenty five thousand at this time um additional mobile smart boards for the districts for alternative teaching spaces when we need to move a group of students outside of a classroom with a smart board um total for that is 38 500

2:27:45 identify technology needs such as laptop charging cards student headphones etc and that is coming to an amount of ten thousand dollars and lastly we have a hundred and fifteen thousand dollars set aside for either additional technology curriculum or facilities needs most likely this is where the math curriculum will come from um that’s that’s our plan today so and i’m going with that um so that is about all i have to report on the covet funds and the monthly financial report if anyone has any committee has any questions let me know sarah

2:28:26 so since we’re using the numbers you sent in for verification this week part of that to cover the math we have approval to use it in this fiscal year so can we purchase the curriculum sooner so that we have more time for our staff to familiarize themselves with it we could absolutely as soon as i get approval on this grant which i will it’s just a matter of sometimes i need additional information um we can absolutely do that yes okay so i mean obviously that’s a nan nan question but i’m just thinking if if this is our funding source if it’s approved for this fy not next fy not that it’s not a pro you know what i mean like

2:29:12 why wait why not let our teachers start to to do that extra work to prepare themselves and and hopefully not have it you know absolutely they’ve earned their summer i would definitely leave that to nan and her team on that end but yes the funding would be available okay and then my question about the unemployment is there a point at which like i know they can go back but is there like a like their cap they can’t go back more than a year like is there any point at which we start to know we get to get a little safer with those numbers or they can go back as far as they want that is a good question and i i truly don’t know the answer i believe they can go back as far as they want as we are a self-insured agency and you know self-self-insured um group

2:29:57 um group um group but typically we don’t see things for more than a couple months outside of the current time frame but due to the pandemic the the agency was just slammed with fraudulent claims and they’re still working through those but some of the fraudulent claims that they paid out they have credited to us and they’re also working on crediting other claims that they have found that they should not have awarded even though they weren’t fraudulent so we have a lot of look coming and going with with those expenses given this are we required to hold anything for that any anything retroactive that may come in after july one for this fiscal year because i know we we do that a little bit

2:30:45 for um just a small portion for um special ed but is that like a requirement we have to do or best practice like do we have to do it to do future planning or no we do we are not required because anything they charge us retroactively is showing up on a current invoice so really current charge so legal to meet the guidelines of our our municipal fiscal year we would not have to best practice is if if we still know that there are a significant number of claims that may be attributed to the previous year i would hold over some funds and we’re allowed to do that for that purpose right yes exactly okay okay that’s really good information thank you michelle all right thanks michelle i don’t think any does anybody have any questions

2:31:30 thank you i mean i’ve been through this so many times with michelle i’m good thanks michelle thank you michelle all right that leads us on to our schedule of bills uh we had schedule in the packet with the um all of the invoices so can i get a motion to approve the identified schedule of bills totaling three million three hundred fifteen thousand one hundred and forty dollars and thirty one cents so moved megan moved

2:32:00 emily second emily second uh any questions on any of those all right i will roll call sarah gold yes emily baron yes yes alright there we go um sarah fox yes david harris yes and megan taylor yes all right thanks all thank you michelle thank you through the chair yes thanks michelle just i i just it would be it’s more than necessary for me to recognize michelle what i presented tonight was

2:32:46 was was a collaboration between the two of us and my humanities language arts mind works in a very different way and michelle suffers my questions that go all around numbers or present her numbers and so she has been an invaluable partner and when i was looking to become a superintendent the advice was you have to have a good business manager and we have a phenomenal business manager so i just wanted to give that shout out to michelle absolutely we hit the jackpot yes we did it’s it’s absolutely a team effort and i’m so happy to be part of this team but thank you but now we’ve chained her to her desk so she can never leave us

2:33:31 i think if there was a top thing that bill did for us finding and securing michelle is probably it legacy yes and that says a lot because bill did an awful lot for us so invaluable michelle invaluable michelle thank you all right um i think we embarrassed her [Laughter] um that leads us to our final portion or i guess semi-final portion um so i’ve got on here the school committee involvement in the coalition for racial justice um and i made tag team with emilia smidge on this one so uh jackie bell becker chair the border selectman had reached out to me i don’t know a week or two ago and and talked with me a little bit

2:34:19 about the this coalition um it’s a group throughout town there are multiple other groups um such as the racial justice league um the task force the team harmony league of women voters who are all involved in this coalition and they are working on multiple things but one of them is sort of these um educational events for the community where they’re picking topics to talk on and present on and um kind of um you know just update and so the one that’s coming up i guess there’s a couple of pieces within here um so they’re asking for some school representation on this um on this coalition and so that’s one piece and then um and they

2:35:04 would like uh preferably the superintendent and then a school committee member uh to be a part of this ongoing and then um additionally or said to drill down further into it they have an upcoming event on april 27th at 7 00 p.m and uh lauren mccormick from the marblehead history museum is leading it with i believe there’s another person that i don’t have that person’s um name and robin taylor robin taylor thank you and um jackie belfecker is moderating it and it is a presentation on lucretia and joseph brown their history in marblehead there’s been a bunch of interesting pieces that have kind of somewhat recently been uncovered on them and so sort of um presenting this is obviously very apropos with the naming of our new building

2:35:51 after that couple so they have asked us to um join with uh these other groups to sponsor this event um when i asked you know sponsor to me has a has a monetary uh piece to it and jackie said absolutely not if this is really um just a support sponsor that uh we would take a vote to be put on to our name the and i would i would like for the marvel high school committee as well as marblehead public schools to be um sort of con joined with this um in support and that our our names would be on the flyers and and um you know we’d have somebody attend um given that emily’s been doing a lot of this work i sort of reached out to her um and she’s been you’ve been in

2:36:37 contact with lauren i think you’re muted uh yeah i asked her i mean i talked to her i feel like a lot she’s amazing about history about history but yes we talked all about this event and she shared the information with me great so i will actually read um because emily had forwarded it on to me um the description of the event on the 27th so it’s um and i believe this is kind of what the uh the flyers would would look like and present so the longmired and myth and misconception uh the real history of lucretia thomas brown and joseph brown is even more fascinating than the legends over the last few years many individuals and organizations in town have uncovered new and exciting threads in the couple’s lives together they weave a short a

2:37:24 story of creativity entrepreneurship strength community and resilience that afflecks that reflects the characteristics of marblehead itself join lauren mccormick executive director of the marblehead museum and robin taylor writer and member of the marblehead racial justice team for a discussion and moderated by selectmen jackie belfecker so that’s the event um i do i would like to you know take an official motion for the school committee along with the school marblehead public school department uh to sponsor this event um so i’ll start there

2:38:02 so moved sarah moved second emily second any questions on any of that i’m assuming that we can use our resources of the emails or or any any messaging we have to going home to kind of just let our community know about this as well and we can put it on to our our websites and everything to kind of i believe it’s a zoom event so we can have that information up there um and would it be a pro like from what you’ve heard emily and sarah would it be appropriate for us to include a student in this like a high school student or no as a rep it’s a good question um i can i can reach out i think i think it may i i don’t want to actually i don’t even

2:38:47 say because i don’t know if there are any students involved currently yeah i don’t know but that is a great idea or at least to ask so i think especially where um team harmony is involved so there very well may be student representation already then i bet there is i don’t know um but i just think the more involved the student body you know it just it disseminates information more yeah all right um i’ve got a motion and it’s seconded um sarah gold yes sarah fox

2:39:20 yes david harris yes megan taylor yes and emily baron yes all right so that motion to sponsor that event uh 5-0 um and if we want to take a motion on this next one that’s fine i’m kind of thinking that for the remainder of this school year slash this committee’s assignments um that it would be appropriate for emily to attend these events with john um does you know i don’t think we need a vote because it’s not a subcommittee so if people are in support of that and then you know we can look at just as we’re going to look at all of our assignments next year we can look at that again oh absolutely no and if you have have a minute like after these or whatever if you can just give us any any

2:40:07 good information that comes out of it or any update just updates yeah absolutely yeah she can she can absolutely under the subcommittee and liaison updates um kind of fill us in

2:40:20 all right wonderful thank you everybody um that leads us to the review of policies we’ve got policy b-e-d-h the public comments at school committee meetings uh this would be our third reading of it uh we did a few little changes last time those were reflected and put back into the drop box um any further questions or issues with that one all right so can i get a motion to accept the policy change to policy b-e-d-h public comment at school committee meetings so moved megan moved second second i’ll have emily second

2:41:05 um all right uh sarah gold yes sarah fox yes david harris yes megan taylor yes and emily baron yes all right thank you all uh megan that leads us to and maybe megan and emily uh the school committee uh website the push notifications uh yeah i forgot this was only agenda to be honest but so when we set up our school committee website back in the fall one of the things that we talked about adding in once it was up and running was push notifications so you know we’ve got a number of meetings obviously on our calendar how do we let people how do we let the community know about those meetings and more importantly if things change

2:41:50 things change things change so um emily has figured out a way to do it because she’s our tech guru now um so i think and correct me from wrong here the way it will work you know what i’m gonna take a step back emily can you explain how it works yeah sure so i’m gonna shut my mouth so on um the school committee website there is now a form um right under our mission statement where the people who want to be updated or alerted um fills out with your name and your email address and we’ve decided that on sundays we will push out an email that gives the

2:42:37 that week’s meetings and times and then if there’s a change you’ll get an email as soon as we find out about the change and the emails produced to be updated that way so go sign up

2:42:55 and i will do my best yeah i just wanna right now it’s somewhat of a manual process um so emily’s the little person in the background making sure all these emails get sent out so this is our best effort we’re going to get it up and running if everyone could have a little bit of grace with emily um that would be appreciated but that you know this is kind of what we really wanted to see with that website because you know we do have a lot of meetings we do want the community to be engaged and how do we make sure that they’re aware of not only the meetings but if there are changes and make it easy for them so that was kind of the thought process behind this i’ll put my whip away for a little while emily but i’ll bring it back out if you’re taking too long to get this up and going

2:43:41 oh emily this will this will there’s a way to automatize this right you’re not going to constantly have to be like little mouse in the wheel doing this right for now i might be the mouse until we can figure it out okay um and then we post most of us yeah i just figured out one most of our meetings are tend to be on thursday like our bigger meeting weekly meetings are on thursdays so they they get posted on monday or tuesday so people will typically get a second at least two to a week right because those aren’t i mean unless we try to get them posted even though we’re ahead of the 48 hour requirement if we try to get them posted by friday just so we’re not flooding people’s inboxes

2:44:28 inboxes inboxes you mean well like by our calendar set right for every the second and fourth what are we the first and third i can’t first and third oh so it won’t be like a push notification with the actual agenda right no no this will just be like um like a little newsletter and then it’ll have a link to our calendar where you can get all the information like once it’s posted yeah and i think you know speaking just for these meetings if we need it the zoom is always created the agenda may not be posted but if we wanted to put something like that in there the zoom is easy um and so that could be in there but maybe that’s over complicating it as well and then i think you know it would

2:45:15 include the um the subcommittee postings too so it would be you know the school committee is sending towards thursday but the subcommittees meet at various times if it’s on our school community calendar it’s gonna be in the email and that is one of the reasons why you know we really did push to get monthly subcommittee meetings set up and in a rhythm so that those you know people can count on those and every once in a while you know we all know things happen and come up but for the most part you know those schedules are set um but things always there’s always change all right well thanks thanks a lot guys i know that’s you know that was a piece that had been talked about and it’s awesome that it’s happening it’s all emily

2:46:01 thank you emily uh that leads us to committee or subcommittee and liaison updates speaking of push notifications i’m just going to put it out there i may need to ask to change the subcommittee for the policy date that we they’re like the day of the week that we go on um i’ve tweaked hours at work a little bit and so it would be great if if we could do that but obviously we’ll work offline in a public meeting saying that might change field change notification coming on

2:46:34 um i have a sub committee liaison update if that’s all right um just a notice from the cpac so um moral shell the cpac co-chair um wanted me to let everybody know that the committee and the community are invited to their conference event next tuesday april 6th at 7 pm marblehead cpac board member and boston university professor dr scott salberg will be speaking on developing future readiness skills and answering questions about your child’s career plans after high school dr solberg’s research has focused on effective career development programs for students with high needs especially those with disabilities the zoom link is out on the cpac website and

2:47:20 i believe there’s going to be facebook promotion as well um but for the committee if you can attend or if anyone in the community uh please do join great megan do they have a date yet for whatever they’re doing for unsung heroes i know it will be different than it typically is but do you have a date on that yet i do not have a date but i can certainly reach out tomorrow i know they’ve been working on it um i don’t know if they solidify today but i can find out and in our next meeting i’ll make sure we update everybody it’s a beautiful event so i want to plug it in i know a lot of other people will want to plug it into i always say it’s the feel good event of the year definitely is and um you know i’ll just give another shout out for uh dr solberg he’s been an invaluable resource on the reopening committee as well as doing a

2:48:06 lot of work on the fel committees that have been going on i think particularly at the high school level um so you know he’s a marblehead local has kids in the system and so he’s just we’re it’s an amazing piece that we have somebody as as highly educated and intelligent um as he is so that’ll be a great event yeah absolutely through the chair absolutely i have asked scott to come and give a presentation to school committee just because of the depth and breadth of work that he has done on reopening and sel because i think there is a lot of stuff that is happening that people don’t know or resources that are available or assessments that have been done and data gathered and so i think it’ll be a very insightful i wanted to get through the budget process uh but we’re gonna get

2:48:54 scott or dr soberg on a future agenda i think that’s awesome thank you john wonderful um and then i’ve been working out dates with michelle um she’s always kind of we we ca like we can’t have a facilities meeting without her because she’s coordinating um those pieces so i’ve been working out some dates with her and um we believe that the final assessment should be in the beginning of next week which is excellent um and then we’re gonna we’re gonna um i’m sending out probably tomorrow if not on monday to the group um just kind of checking because we knew we were going to have this next meeting off cycle so we could get in as soon as possible um to check their dates and so we can give everybody a day or two to

2:49:42 digest you know this document before we we expect everyone to come and be able to you know discuss intelligently but it’s exciting that we’re getting that information back and that’s really going to be able to drive a lot of information great all right i think that’s it policy we obviously hit on the policy earlier so budget done that done all right david uh that leads us to the building project update do you need to share your screen you’re muted

2:50:15 please do all right you can [Music] have half of this meeting as a co-host at this point um with some uh

2:50:32 that good that good nope nothing yet nothing yet so i did let me just see

2:50:58 this is a um typical classroom that’s on the second floor that’s um you can start to see some of the painting that’s taken place with the colors on the walls and the windows that windows that are in place and in addition starting later next week the ceilings will be in place you can see the structure and then there’s some of the radiant heating that comes along the if you see my cursor up along the upper edge of the windows there’s radiant heating that comes down and washes over the windows

2:51:38 next photo is a look at the extended learning spaces that we’re really excited about and you’ll start to see this develop more and with the lockers but what you can see here is the uh panel that’s in place where you’ll have the the touch screen and below that where you see some of the insulation is um where there’ll be lockers but um you can see the doorways that go into the classrooms and the sheetrock work that’s done and and the painting and all the different colors that they’re already starting to paint so this blue is the color of what it’s going to look like and you know that that’s really exciting for

2:52:24 the extended learning spaces uh this next look gives you if you were sitting in the cafeteria this is looking um from the cafeteria toward the stage and so as they start to progress and finish up the stage work and there’s a little the white barrier that you see is on the other side which is a photo coming up that is the gym they’re just progressing to um finish up the work on the stage that or or the um cafetorium if you will where um there’s this total pass-through so if you’re in the cafeteria you can see the stage or you can open it up and you can also see it from the from the gymnasium

2:53:13 nothing dramatic here but this is the nurse’s office not sure who the nurse will be but um this is a view of the actual nurses office at the new school and the sheetrock is up and coming together the next one is monday night the contractors believe it or not stayed till 11 o’clock at night to do the painting in the gymnasium so what you’re looking at is the gymnasium ceiling and in order to um you know contractors to not be on top of each other they had the painters come in at three o’clock in the afternoon and they started to do the paint work and you can see how it’s progressing

2:53:59 along the ceiling with with the white and the and the paintwork you can see the um [Music] you know the skylights that are in in the gymnasium and in the next couple of weeks you’ll start to see along where the windows are the translucent panels will come in and it’s it’s amazing how bright this space is just with the amount of windows that we have now but when the translucent panels come in and with the the white paint it just really uh brightens up the space and it’s really starting to come together so that’s exciting um i really like this photo these these are the doors that just kind of progress

2:54:44 through classroom to classroom to classroom as the committee knows this was a decision that the teachers really wanted um to have connecting doors between classrooms for flexibility and from a safety and security standpoint it allows additional egress from classrooms to have these doorways up along the windows but you can start to see how it’s coming together the the door frames are painted um you can see another room where the blue wall has the painting and um starting to really look like classrooms um love this picture this is the uh this is the emily lighthouse right here

2:55:30 um you can start to see it’s it’s really finished i think next week the uh top of the skylights will come out and they’ll start to place um the skylights that will allow the light to come down into the lighthouse area you can see the sheetrock on the walls and in that area where the sheetrock is there’ll be another set of stairs that’ll be the staircase that leads up to the second floor and so they’ve been holding off on doing that work until all of the the completed sheet rocking is done and the one um window or opening that you see there is into the uh the media center that will um allow additional light and

2:56:16 you’ll be able to look down into the excuse me the entryway um this one might not be so exciting but it is from a mechanical standpoint this is the first rooftop unit that was hoisted up on the building yesterday uh as you can see also that’s where the mosaic the gray area is where the mosaic will go so the rooftop units started to arrive and we had a couple of challenges with the wind on monday so they delayed some of this crane work and um so the rooftop units are starting to go on and then with some of the rain that came today uh the final some of the final rooftop units will go up and skylight work will take place tomorrow

2:57:01 tomorrow tomorrow um if the weather cooperates and so that’s that’s really exciting and that’s a big um milestone for the project because once these units are in they’ll start to be wired and plumbed in to all the fixtures that are in the building and then last but not least i wanted to show this picture this is hot off the presses from today uh lucretia and joseph brown elementary school this is from gene and um the um as you can see at the entryway there’ll be another area that will say that we’ll have the name of the school but here’s where the official name will be on the

2:57:49 school so you know this is gene’s um you know he’s chosen this this type of uh script and design that is consistent with the school and i’m really excited about it i you know it matches the color of the window frames and i think it’s just uh it’s just gonna really be a good piece of the school to have that right there when you pull in and that’s how it’s gonna be uh laid out when people come to the school so there it is that’s fantastic i was watching them from my office window today do some of that rooftop work on the systems up there and i felt really awful because it was that’s battery rain and blustery and my worst type of weather so

2:58:35 i was very impressed that they were up there working yeah there’s always so much progress uh every other week when you’re reporting to us david so it’s awesome and yeah i can’t wait for our walk through yes

2:58:51 so that to that point um i’ll i’m going to work on setting up um tours that will be as i mentioned um typically when construction ends is three o’clock or 3 30. so i’ll be setting up a couple of flexible dates for groups in the next couple of weeks where we can get people in and we’ll continue to do that not just in the next couple weeks but i’ll set something up with um left field and trip from gilbane so that we can get people um onto the property in the next couple of weeks for some site visits for sure but it’s it’s really exciting it’s coming together and um you know katie martin’s been

2:59:38 actively involved in the in the landscape piece and i want to thank dr bucky nan murphy and all of the teachers we have landed the furniture and equipment a piece of the school there was some presentation that was made at our building committee a couple of uh for last week and those purchase orders are moving forward a lot of work went into that a lot of work to decide tables desks cubicles you name it and um the purchase orders are being submitted there david sandon uh confirmed that uh yesterday with an email and so that’s really exciting that we’re able to get that done so thanks for

3:00:24 everybody who was involved with that wonderful exciting update thanks david

3:00:32 all right um that moves us on to new business i don’t think we have any new business sarah do you think um can we put on one of our upcoming agendas sooner rather than later what um just an update on our program on our 18 to 22 year olds um we i know when we moved out of you know the bell school and kind of took over evoluth we moved that demographic um and i believe they’re currently at vets um which was which we none of us are planning for that to be their final destination um so i’m just wondering if we have an update on kind of what’s going on with that program and what what the destination is if it’s been identified and what plans are are in the works um this is very exciting

3:01:18 for that program and i just wanted to highlight a little bit about where where we’re moving for them and um both you know physically and and metaphorically where we’re where we’re going with that program so if we can get an update that would be great sure yep john was writing that down i’m sure he can talk to eric about that

3:01:39 all right um that leads us on to public comment uh if anybody has any additional public comment to make raise your hand uh scott solberg go ahead

3:02:01 hold on scott you’re muted we can’t hear you

3:02:25 i can go to cindy and then uh and then as you work on your audio piece oh are you good now um yes we can hear you can you hear me yes all right my system is totally crashed so i’m not going to be able to show video oh um scott solberg um ramsay road oh there i go now coming up um so i i just wanted to say a couple of things one megan was talking about the the reopening committee and i’ve had the privilege as a parent serving on that role with for the cpac as well as a parent and i have to say this yet this morning’s session was so amazing there’s giddiness going on about monday and you’re hearing it from the principals you’re hearing it from everyone and i hope there’s a lot of youtubes and a lot of just facebook

3:03:11 posts of just the celebration that’s going to happen on monday because this it’s amazing how much work our communities put together i mean i got to hear you know our dan bauer talk about the high school and the music and this i mean there’s there’s so much going into monday let’s celebrate as a town and make it make it happen i also want to say thank you michelle cresta you bring my my heart rate down every time you talk um it’s just i i just come away from these meetings saying thank you i’m just for the last few years i’ve never known where we are on the budget and whether it’s good or bad the way you talk about it and putting it together i feel so good about where we are as a community so i just want to say thank you michelle you don’t get enough kudos i just want

3:03:57 to put it out there and also thank you all for the seo stuff that we’re going to do and honestly i’m going to step away and i’m going to certainly want to present but it’s going to be our students i’m hoping to have our high school students talk about this they are doing some great work uh gina hart has been working with them and i’ve been in the background kind of facilitating but they’re about to do something really extraordinary and i’m hoping they’re going to lead the conversation with our community about what we need to do for our students so get away from our just adults doing it let our students lead this seo conversation so thank you so much and looking forward as we go forward yeah i can’t wait for that scott thank you yeah that’s really exciting and i’m excited to hear about the students and i think scott you know both of us in the mental health field we’re going to just push as many kids into the mental health field because there’s going to be so many

3:04:42 needs as we go forward so thank you scott uh cindy tower lowen you with us cindy i am i’m just trying to sorry don’t worry okay i’ll even put my video on now um so i want to thank everybody tonight because i know sitting at the school committee meetings for over a number of years especially the last few years um there was a lot of pain and i just appreciate everything that you guys are doing i know it’s not easy and i know it’s sometimes very thankless but

3:05:29 i for one appreciate it in terms of you know in many of the roles that i’ve played regarding you know a parent stakeholder part of the marblehead racial justice team cpac i could go on but i’m not going to um but i do want to acknowledge everyone and their hard work and i am so pleased to know that the school committee is also taking on as well as john in the school district taking on you know working with the curriculum and racial justice and um and that piece in terms of the narrative here in marblehead so i’m really happy and proud that that’s happening [Music] so

3:06:14 so so um and the last thing is david i loved the picture of the school i loved seeing lucretia and joseph up there in those lettering and the mosaic um so i don’t know if you have a picture of that that i can get posted on the marblehead racial justice team facebook but also sharing it can i do that yet i certainly can share the powerpoint for that the um the mosaic is i don’t know if we have the mosaic the mosaic i’m set with but i’m just talking about the the actual building yeah that i saw that obviously

3:07:01 has a mosaic and the name so it’s just really nice to see it thank you for having that there tonight and i appreciate that i’ll send that to you tonight and you can share that for sure okay thank you so much and that’s all i have to say good night and thanks for letting me um chat thank you cindy all right uh uh miss swany has her hand back up just one more question is there any motion like am i all set or how how does that work for the funding and whatnot for the for the items and the flags

3:07:47 we’ll work it through my office yep okay so it’s approved i don’t i don’t need any other approval okay just making sure okay thank you so much thanks candace all right uh that leads us to correspondence um i don’t have any correspondence to put out this evening so i will officially adjourn off at 908 pm thank you everyone yes thank you